


In the Rain

by JeanBiscuit



Category: Cowboy Bebop
Genre: F/M, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive, i just really like spike okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-16 11:24:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 59,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2267925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanBiscuit/pseuds/JeanBiscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A continuation of Cowboy Bebop, of sorts, starting at the ending of the final episode.  Reader saves Spike from certain death at the front steps of the Red Dragon headquarters, then reunites him with the other members of the Bebop crew.  Reader is persuaded to stay on the Bebop by Spike, who points out that she is the only medical professional on the ship.  With Spike being hunted by the remnants of the syndicate, and Reader's own past to consider, a wild ride is sure to ensue.  </p><p>I just like Spike Spiegel a lot don't look at me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meeting Under the Blue Sky

**Author's Note:**

> i realize that the creator of cowboy bebop has stated that he thinks a continuation of the series would upset fans, but at this point i don't really care.  
> there will be indeterminable amounts of sex and violence at certain points in the story, chapters that contain a hefty amount of those will have warnings.  
> this story is designed for a female reader, but please feel free to interpret it any way you wish. 
> 
> hope you enjoy!

The day was blue.  That was all you could think.  The sky, the ground, the buildings.  All steeped in a bright, almost sickening blue.  You trudged along the streets of the city you had chosen to call home, staring at the cracks in the sidewalk beneath your feet.  A cloak sat heavily on your shoulders, obscuring most of your face and body.  You had learned long ago that it was never wise to show your face in a city like this, especially doing what you did.

You didn’t particularly know where you were going.  You were just walking.  For once, the number of patients to attend to had taken a dive, and you had decided to get some fresh air while you could.  They were always incoming, people with cuts, scrapes, bruises, broken bones, infections.  A close friend, long dead, had been a doctor, and you had learned all you could.  

You were entering into quite a bad part of town, you realized.  At the same time, you realized that you didn’t care.  Soft conversations filtered through your brain, whispers that the Red Dragon Syndicate had their base around here.  Good, you thought.  Maybe they would pay you more for treating them.

You walked in front of the courtyard of a building, completely walled in except for an arched entrance, and you stopped.  It was a grand building, with a wide, tall staircase leading up to a wide, tall front door.  But you could smell it.

You had smelled it often enough to know.  The taste of iron on your tongue, the instinctive shivers that went down your spine.

Your eyes scanned the courtyard.  There wasn’t a soul to be seen, or even a lack thereof.  There were no blood spots, no bodies, just the smell, pressing into your nostrils, filtering through your brain, setting off every medical instinct you had picked up over the years.  

And then you saw it.

A person, collapsed on the stairs, tufts of their dark hair swaying in the slight breeze.  You strode over, instinctively pulling your cloak farther over your face.  It especially would not do to be seen here, where you could feel something, something menacing, lurking in the cracks between the cobblestones, peering out of the building’s windows.  

When you got to the person, you saw it was a man.  He was lying sprawled on the stairs, head towards the front door of the building, blood from his abdomen seeping through his shirt.  He was handsome, sure, with a long, straight nose, chiseled jawline, broad shoulders, and what could only be described as a knot of dark brown hair sitting atop his head, poofing upwards well beyond what was normal.  But you tried not to think about the dead too much. His eyes were closed, and he had what seemed to be a small smile on his face.

You deftly loosened his tie and brushed the popped collar of his shirt aside, gently placing your fingers in the dip of his collarbone. It was always nice to be sure before you dumped them in the nearest landfill.  Something faint thrummed against your fingertips.

Ah.  So he was alive.

You then turned your attention to his abdomen, where the smell of blood seemed to be congregated the strongest.  The front of his shirt, right above the navel, had been sliced horizontally, with dried blood caking the edges of the fabric, new liquid seeping out of the wound below and spreading outwards through the garment.  Gently peeling the edges of the shirt aside, you sucked in a breath.

In short, it was bad.

He had been cut by something long and incredibly sharp, a katana or something like it, and the incision was long, and deep.  You could see the pink flesh of muscle, and the even pinker flesh of some organ peering out of the wound.  It would be a chore to fix, and if he survived the reparative surgery, the following infection (for an infection almost always followed) was likely to kill him.

Your gaze snapped back to his face.  It was young, mid to late twenties, you guessed, around the same as you. You wondered how he had ended up with a sword wound in his abdomen, sprawled on the steps of a building in a city that was famous for its gun violence.  

Sighing, you picked up his limp arm and dropped it over your shoulder.  Moving slowly, so as not to aggravate the wound, you lifted him into a sitting position.  A soft breath escaped through his cracked lips, and you stopped.  You waited.  Slowly, ever so slowly, you twined your arm around his torso, just below the rib cage, and stood.   He was tall, heavy, and limp, and you nearly buckled under him.  But you grit your teeth and tightened your knees, and slowly started to trudge down the steps, the man’s feet dragging behind you.  His hot breath whistled over your shoulder, and even underneath your cloak you shivered.

* * *

Your hovel wasn’t much.  No hovels are, truly.  It was a tiny shack squished between two other tiny shacks in a neighborhood of tiny shacks.  Shelves lined all four walls, stocked with bottles and bowls and cups filled with pills, needles, syringes, scalpels, masks, disinfectants, various food items.  Herbs and canvas bags hung from the ceiling, filling the air with a musty, almost overpowering smell.  In the corner was your bed, a pile of blankets and canvas all twisted up into a mess of fabric from your nights of restless sleep.  In the other corner was a stove with a dilapidated cooktop, and a small junkyard refrigerator you had recently fixed up. Right in the center of the one-room shack was your operating table, a simple wooden thing stolen from a scrapyard ages ago.  It was covered in a white sheet that bore the marks of a failed cleansing, and surrounded by tin tables pilfered from the alley behind a hospital, and a dilapidated wooden stool for you to sit on stood in front of it.  You threw open the door that wasn’t really much of a door, rather just a wooden plank on faulty hinges, and were greeted with blissful silence.

Normally, on a slow day, your hut was filled to the brim with people, jockeying for space, knocking things over, bumping their heads on the herbs and bags full of things hanging above them.  But today, for some reason, everything was silent.  It was as if the entire city had fallen asleep, and you didn’t know how or why.

You set the man on the operating table, somehow managing to finagle him so he was lying on his back, his head lolling to the side.  You lifted his arms and legs up after him, and stood back to observe your work.  

Blood was already pooling beneath him on the table, and his skin was turning sickeningly pale.  Pulling your hood away from your face, you huffed, and started to work.

You really should hire an assistant.

* * *

The surgery was long, and agonizing, for both parties involved.  You had to feed him enough painkillers so that he wouldn’t wake up screaming (you hated that), then slowly peel back the flesh, and work on stitching together his organs.  You must have disinfected your tools and the surrounding area at least ten times, but you knew it wouldn’t be enough.  It was never enough.  You of course faced the problem on how to stitch his organs, because you couldn’t go back in and remove the stitches later, but luckily, you had managed to persuade a doctor fallen on hard times into giving you dissolvable stitches the day before.  But you had to start from the bottom, and stitch up every layer of muscle upwards for it to heal properly.  You didn’t know exactly how many layers there were, but enough to make you irritable and extremely tired.  You stitched and sewed, cut and sliced, until finally you reached the top layer, and using an especially thick cord, you closed the incision with swift, practiced fingers.  

It was done.

You sat back on the stool, sighing heavily, closing your eyes for a moment and tilting your head upwards.  Your arms were soaked in blood up to the elbow, the white cloth covering the table was ruined, there was blood all over the goddamn floor, and the voices of the local orphans that had come to watch filtered in from just beyond the door frame, irritating you to no end.  You had nearly severed the poor guy’s large intestine completely in half when one of them had shouted for another, and had turned on them, brandishing your bloody scalpel, your arms and front caked in blood.  Needless to say, they ran, but they always came back.

You slowly stood up, and strode over to the wood plank that was your door, slamming it shut with a loud bang.  The hinges rattled dangerously, and you were certain you heard a screw pop, but you were too tired to care.  

Your gaze flicked back over to the man lying on the operating table, totally comatose, one of his arms dangling off the side, his lips slightly parted.  You had given him a fair amount of painkillers, since abdominal surgery was pretty major, but now you were wondering if you had given him too much.  Meds these days were pretty advanced, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t put someone to sleep and then not have them wake up.  And so you waited, again.

You had cut the man’s blood soaked shirt pretty much into pieces when you were unsticking it from his skin, and so now the only thing covering his upper half was his blue jacket.  You hoped he didn’t mind, because you didn’t have anything that would fit him.  You set to the task of cleaning up, mopping the blood from the floor, dropping your tools in antiseptic, changing into fresh clothes, organizing your shelves and hanging things.

An hour had passed, and he still had not stirred.  Sighing exasperatedly, you went over to him, probing for his pulse a little more roughly than was necessary, and feeling the reassuring beat against your fingers you relaxed a bit.  Having nothing else better to do, you gently probed at his stitches, testing them to see if they were sturdy.  You started to hum a tune, a lullaby or something akin to it that you had long forgotten the words to.  And then you heard something.

You would have passed it off as an exhale if you hadn’t been so close.  But it was definitely a sound, a vibration of the vocal cords passing through his dry lips.  

You moved to his face, bending over and peering into it, your humming abruptly cut off.  His eyelids fluttered, and then cracked open slightly, revealing a set of deep reddish-brown eyes.  

“Julia,” he whispered.

Julia?  You wrinkled your nose.  Who was Julia?  A wife, a girlfriend, a sister, maybe?  But from the way his facial expression changed, the way his eyebrows were quirked, the way his lips were set, you didn’t think it was a sister.  At least, you hoped not.

“Please don’t have a wet dream on my operating table,” you grumbled irritably, standing up straight again, and his eyes snapped open, his brows lowering.  Apparently, you sounded nothing like the Julia of his dreams.

“Who’re --,” he gritted out, his voice attempting to be dangerous, as he attempted to sit up, reaching for something at his hip that wasn’t there.  Before you could say anything, he ground to a halt, his face contorting with pain as the muscles of his abdomen rippled his incision.

“Well, I was going to tell you not to move,” you sighed as he lowered himself back to a comfortable position, “but I think you’ve figured it out.”

“Who are you?” he ground out, his voice scratchy, but deep and resonating.

“A doctor, of sorts,” you replied with a shrug.  His brows narrowed further.  

“Where am I?” he snapped, or attempted to, but the sudden rush of air sent a bolt of noticeable pain through him.  

“My house,” you answered, irritation bubbling within you as you crossed your arms.  You said house, but really, it barely qualified, and he seemed to realize that as he looked around skeptically.

“Why . . .?” he breathed, clutching his abdomen.  

“Because that’s what I do,” you said, sliding the stool over and taking a seat in front of him.  “I see people who are dying, and I fix them up and send them on their way.”  

“I don’t have any money,” he shot back.

“Not required,” you replied with equal snappiness, huffing in vexation.  “For emergencies such as this, you get a full fixing-up, free of charge.  Congratulations.”

Grunting in response, he surveyed the hut again, his eyes dancing over the bed in the corner, then to the shelves and the hanging things, to the door, with the eyes peering through the cracks, and finally to you, his eyes taking in your face, your body, your hands clasped in your lap.

Narrowing your eyes slightly, you leaned towards him, and he drew himself up, glaring at you indignantly.

“What happened to your eye?” you asked pointing to his right one.  He jumped, blinking in surprise.

“My eye?” he repeated, all anger in his tone replaced with blatant shock.

“Yes, your eye,” you confirmed, rolling yours.  “One’s lighter than the other.  What happened?”

He looked to the floor, bringing up his hand to brush at the skin underneath said eye.  His brows suddenly drew together once more, and his gaze flicked back to you.  

“An accident,” he said shortly, indicating that the topic was closed to discussion.

You merely sighed, and stood up, brushing imaginary dust off of your hands.  He made to follow, but immediately hissed with pain and fell back onto the table with a thud.  He groaned, covering his eyes with his hands, his mouth set into a tight grimace.

“You could at least tell me your name,” you said conversationally, moving to gather extra blankets from the back of the room.

He looked over to you, his lips set into a line.

“Spike,” he said finally, his voice rough.  “Spike Spiegel.”

“That’s a name,” you snorted, dumping the blankets you had collected next to your pile in the corner.  “Did your mother give birth to you in a room surrounded by barbed wire?”

“What are you --,” he began angrily, but stopped with a groan, clutching his stomach.  “At least tell me yours!” he managed to get out.

“[First],” you said.  “[First] [Last].”

“That’s a name,” he mocked. “Did your mother --”

“Well, Spike Spiegel,” you cut him off matter-of-factly, spinning on your heel to face him, hands on your hips.  “Since you have just received major abdominal surgery, I would suggest you hunker down here for a few days.  You can call whoever you’re with, I don’t care, but you’re not allowed to leave this hut without my say-so.  Doctor’s orders.”

“You expect me to believe you didn’t take everything I had in my pockets?” he replied bitterly, staring resolutely up at the ceiling.

“I’m a doctor -- sort of -- not a criminal,” you snapped back.  “Go on, check your pockets, everything should be there. Unless somethin' fell out on the way over here, but I wouldn’t have noticed, seeing as I was hauling your unconscious ass.”

Shooting you a suspicious look, he slowly rose to a half sitting position, balancing his weight on one elbow, as he rummaged through his pockets.  His eyebrows rose as he found everything to be intact, and he looked up at you in shock.

“Are you really a doctor?” he asked bemusedly.  

“Why do you ask?” you replied pugnaciously.

“Because every doctor I’ve met has either stolen something from me during treatment, or demanded a hefty sum of money afterwards,” he said slowly, cocking his head to the side.

“I’m not ‘officially’ a doctor,” you said carefully, making air quotes with your fingers.  “I just lived with someone for a while who was.”

“You’re not a doctor?!” he cried, jerking in pain at the sudden movement.  “And you just performed surgery on me?!”

“Calm down, you idiot,” you snapped.  “Ask anyone around here, they’ll tell you to come to me.  I’m the closest thing to a doctor they’ve got.  I may not be certified, but I learned from someone who was, and that’s as close as I’m gonna get, and as close as these people need.  Now come on, I’ll lay you down somewhere more comfortable.”

Walking over to him, you slipped his arm over your shoulder and dragged him off of the table before he could protest.  You stopped his legs’ sudden descent with your own, wincing as the force was transported to you instead.  He started to splutter as you dragged him over to the corner, but you ignored all his protests.  You dumped him onto his pile of blankets, and stood back to assess him, your arms crossed.

“Who the hell do you think you are?!” he yelled as he struggled to sit up.  

“The person who just patched up the hole in your stomach,” you barked back, and he snapped his lips shut.  “Now, if you want to keep your internal organs inside your body, I suggest you lie still and stop jerking around like a fish out of water.”  

Grumbling to himself, he gradually lowered himself back onto the blankets, folding his hands over his stomach.  Upon feeling the bare flesh of his abdomen, he frowned, his cheeks going pink.

“Mind telling me why I don’t have a shirt on?” he asked, his voice cautious, as you bustled around, grabbing food off of the shelves.

“Because it was covered in blood and stuck to your skin so well that I had to cut it up to get it off,” you replied practically, turning on the burner of your stove.  

“You didn’t have anything else to give me?” he grumbled as you whipped a knife from your belt and sawed open a can of beans.  

“Do I look like a six foot muscled man to you?” you snorted, placing the can of beans on the cooktop and reaching for another.  “You have blankets, use them.”

You heard the rustling of fabric, sniffing, and then more words, “You’re making _beans?”_

“Stop complaining, invalid,” you sighed as you removed the first can of beans from the stove and replaced it with the second one, rummaging in a nearby bin for a spoon.  “Now can you feed yourself or do you need me to do it?”

“I can feed myself,” he said brusquely as you strode over, spoon and can in hand.

“Fine then,” you replied airily as he snatched the items from you.  You settled down next to him on your own blanket pile, watching him carefully as his shaky hands tried to get a good grip.  He slowly lowered the spoon into the can of beans, drew it out, and brought it to his lips.  As he tightened his grip on the spoon, his grip on the can weakened, and before he knew it, it was tumbling out of his grasp.

Your hand shot out, fast as lightning, and you caught the can mere inches from the ground.

“Invalids shouldn’t feed themselves,” you said firmly as he scowled at you.

With an eye-roll and a muttered expletive, he shoved the spoon into your hands and leaned back against the wall.  He did look extremely tired, his skin was pale, with dark circles under his eyes and lines creasing his forehead.

With steady precision, you drew out a spoonful of beans, and held the utensil in front of Spike’s closed mouth, waiting.  

With a groan, he snapped his lips around the spoon, his teeth clinking against the metal, and as he chewed something seemed to light up in his eyes.  He gestured with his chin for another spoonful, and you complied, getting through the whole can in no more than two minutes as he practically scarfed the food down.  

“Got any water?” he gasped as he swallowed the last morsel, sauce dripping from the corner of his mouth.  

“Naturally,” you sighed, pointing to the corner of your mouth as you stood up.  Spike blinked, and then, understanding, his tongue flicked out, quickly mopping up the mess he had made around his mouth.

You went outside, to the pump, cranked out a pitcher of water, lugged it back inside, and the bastard was asleep.  

Sighing indignantly, you dumped the pitcher of water on the floor with a dull thud.  Well, if lughead was catching some sleep, you might as well get some, too.  He was still leaning up against the wall, his chin on his chest, snoring softly.  Rolling your eyes, you dragged him down to his back, pulling a blanket over him and making sure there was nothing sharp near him, in case he shared your sleeping habits. 

Yawning in spite of yourself, you hunkered down in your own pile of fabric, pulling the old and stained blankets up to your chin as you curled into a ball on your side, facing the wall.  

You dimly hoped, as your eyelids fluttered shut, that you didn’t kick him in your sleep.


	2. See You Space Cowboy...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey hey you you look at this giant pile of trash  
> the thirst is real

You woke up, and you were warm.  Which was a first.  Normally, you twisted and turned so much that your blankets were thrown right off of you, and nights in the city weren’t exactly cozy.  But you were blissfully, wonderfully warm, so warm that you almost never wanted to move ever again.

But then the gears in your head started to turn, and you gradually began to register the things around you.  One, that most of the warmth was radiating from right in front of you, two, that the pillow you used had somehow grown firmer, three, that your arm was thrown over something, four, that that thing was moving up and down in a slow rhythm, and five, as you probed slightly with your fingers, that the mass was soft and hard at the same time and felt suspiciously like –

Muscle.

Your eyes snapped open, and you were staring into someone’s side.  A man’s side.

You bolted upright, cheeks burning, and saw that somehow, during the night, you had wedged yourself extremely, extremely close to Spike Spiegel.  You frantically scrambled backwards, your back hitting the wall with a dull thump, your heart pounding.  Somehow, you had scooted over well off of your blanket pile, encroaching more than a few inches onto his, and had proceeded to curl up into a ball at his side, throw your arm over him, and use his as a pillow.  

You sat there, dumbfounded, your heartbeat thrumming through your chest.

Why?  Why this guy?  You had slept next to countless other patients, sometimes even for months at a time as you waited for them to recover, and every single night, without fail, you had stayed on your side.  Was it because you had acknowledged his attractiveness?  Was that it?  Because you had admitted to yourself that he was one of the most good-looking guys you had ever seen?  

You shook your head furiously, sucking in a deep breath to calm yourself.  No, that wasn’t it, it was just because you had thrown the blankets off of yourself, gotten cold, and it just so happened that he was the closest source of heat.  Yeah.  Yeah, that was it.

Closing your eyes and exhaling sharply, you stood up in a rustle of fabric, straightening out your baggy shirt and striding over to the abandoned water pitcher from the night before.

Without even having to look, you rummaged in a box to your right, pulled out a glass, and sloshed water into it.  It wasn’t exactly the right color, and it tasted suspiciously like metal as you gulped it down.  You were going to get dysentery one of these days, you just knew it.  You held the glass in both hands and stared down at Spike Spiegel, clicking the glassware irritatedly with your fingernails.  Bastard.  He needed to tone down the goddamn pheromones.

Sighing, you plunked your glass down in the sink, strode over to your door, and threw it open.

There was already a line stretching halfway down the block, and the sun had barely risen.  

Grabbing your smock from its hook by the door, you gestured for the first person to come in.

* * *

At least fifty patients later, including two screaming toddlers, a crying baby, and an aggressive middle-aged man, and Spike Spiegel was still out cold.

Your patience just about shot through, you ushered your current patient out the door, yelled that you were taking a lunch break, and slammed the flimsy wooden planks shut.  Your operating table was covered in all sorts of pus and grime and blood that stank so foully that you threw open the windows and immediately set to cleaning it up.  Half your patients were walking away with an infection, you knew, and all you could hope was that it didn’t cause an epidemic.  Sighing, you threw your dirty mops and rags into the corner to be dealt with later, and strode over to where Spike Spiegel was still asleep, his snoring ruffling the tufts of hair dangling over his eyes.  Gritting your teeth, you nudged him sharply in the leg with the tip of your boot.  He grumbled and shifted, but didn’t wake.

Growling, you kicked him in the shin with a simultaneous yell of “Hey!” and he bolted upright, then went right back down.

“What?” he ground out as he clutched at his incision.  “Aren’t invalids supposed to catch all the sleep they can?”

“When you have fancy IVs to feed you nutrients, yes,” you replied curtly.  “But in an uncertified doctor’s hovel, no.”

Rolling his eyes, he slowly slid back against the wall so he was half-sitting, and glared up at you. “More beans?” he asked unhappily.

“Fortunately for you, no,” you said exasperatedly as you went over to rummage atop a shelf.  “I bought eggs yesterday.”

He merely grunted in reply, and you drew a shabby pan out from under your stove, setting it on the cooktop with a thunk.  As you turned on the burner and threw some eggs in, the smell wafting through the air, you heard his stomach growl loudly.  Stifling a chuckle, you cracked more eggs in, figuring that an invalid should probably get one or two extra.  

“Got a smoke, Doc?” he yawned, stretching slightly, as you slid the eggs onto a plate and strode over.  

“Oh, yes, the doctor has cigarettes,” you replied sarcastically as you sat cross-legged to his left.  “Now open wide, invalid.”

“I have a name, you know,” he grumbled as you forced an egg into his mouth.

“And I don’t care,” you responded matter-of-factly, lifting up another one.  

Taking the last three eggs for yourself, you sat back against the wall of your hut, closing your eyes and listening to the sounds of shuffling people and the buzz of conversation outside.  Opening one eye lazily, you turned it to Spike, who was staring at what looked like a comm device in his hand.

“Have you called them yet?” you asked, and he jumped, as if he had forgotten you were there.

“Who?” he asked defensively, sliding the device back into his pocket.

“The people you were with,” you answered evenly, and his brows lowered, his gaze troubled.

“No,” he said, his voice quiet, and you huffed.

“Well, don’t you think they’re worried?” you berated in exasperation, sitting up straight to give your vocal chords full effect.  “I mean, I don’t know how long you’ve been gone, but usually when a friend doesn’t come back for the night, you start to worry.”

“They aren’t expecting me to come back,” he said brusquely, and you opened both eyes, turning to face him fully.

“Regret is a useless emotion,” you advised, your tone suddenly dead serious.  He looked straight into your eyes, and you noticed now, more than ever, how out of place his right eye seemed.  “Call them.”

Sighing, he looked away from you, rubbing the back of his neck as he rummaged through his pockets.  A small, triumphant smile came to your face and you leaned back, arms crossed.  He pulled out the comm device once again, tapped the screen a few times, and held it up to his ear, waiting.  

Suddenly, there was an explosion of voices, female and male from what you could hear, but Spike just sat there, emotionless.

“I’m fine,” he finally answered, his tone flat.  “I’m in a doctor’s –,” he stopped, his eyes swiveling distastefully around your hut, “house.  I don’t know.  I’ll ask.”  Pulling the comm away from his ear, he looked at you and asked if his crew could come pick him up.

You shrugged.  “Sure, as long as you promise to get plenty of bedrest.”

He didn’t answer, and placed the comm back against his head.  “Sure.  She says it’s fine.  Yeah, it’s a she.”  Suddenly, his expression darkened, his mouth twisting into a grimace.  “She died,” he intoned blunty, and all voices on the other end stopped.  She?  Did he mean Julia?  Your lips tightened, your eyes narrowing.  If this guy had a history of females dying around him, then you were getting the fuck out of that.  “Yeah.  Yeah.  See you.”

He ended the conversation with a forceful tap, closing the comm and staring at it in the palm of his hand.  Suddenly, he convulsed, and hurled the comm at the door at top speed, shattering it against the wood.  You started, staring from the pieces of the comm to Spike and back, utterly bewildered.

“W-Wasn’t that expensive?!” you finally managed to splutter, and he looked at you, his expression unreadable.

“Doesn’t matter,” he snapped, and leaned back against the wall, his arms crossed.  

“You are just a piece of work,” you barked, standing up briskly.  “What time are your friends coming to get you?”

“A week,” he stated flatly, still staring resolutely at the floor.

“Fine.  I’ll lug you there,” you retorted testily, tightening the knot of your smock and straightening out your clothes.  “Get some rest ‘till then.”  

* * *

The two of you started to develop a routine.  You got up at dawn, attended patients till noon, kicked Spike awake, ate, tended patients till sundown, kicked Spike awake, ate, and then went to sleep.  It wasn’t monotonous, not at all, for every day was different.  Every day Spike would come up with some new witty jab, to which you would immediately fire back with a better one, every day more women came in and became flushed when they saw the mostly shirtless man lounging in the corner of the room, and every morning, without fail, you found yourself coiled around him.  It was embarrassing, really.  You hoped that he was a deep enough sleeper that he didn’t notice.  God, you desperately hoped he didn’t notice.  If that ‘she’ he had been referring to was indeed Julia, and if he had loved her, and if she was dead (recently, it sounded, too), then you were doing something inexplicably awful.  You wondered how you would cope when he finally took off, how many mornings you would wake up and feel cold.

The days passed as if they were in the depths of summer, which they weren’t.  They were lazy and heavy and sleepy, and some mornings all you wanted to do was stay in bed and curl up against Spike’s side, even though he pissed you off to no end and the love of his life (maybe?) had just died, because you were selfish.

Yes, you were selfish.  And selfishness was the only thing you had left.  You were tired of giving.  

By the third day, he could sit up, and feed himself.  By the fourth, he could cross his legs.  By day five, he was standing.  Six, he was helping.

There were quite possibly many things that Spike Spiegel could do, but being a doctor was not one of them.  

First off, he had no patience.  The minute a patient would start whining or crying or yelling, his face would contort and he had to step outside for a minute, grasp in his pockets for cigarettes he didn’t have, and then curse loudly into the gradually chilling autumn air.  At least, it was autumn there.  Who knows what season Spike was in.  

You thought, one evening, that his world was perpetually in the end of winter, just before spring.  When everything is cold and wet, dark and rainy, and the meager amounts of snow still coating the ground are dark and indistinguishable from the dirt.  One day, when a rainstorm passed through, he gazed out the window gloomily, and when he reached in his pocket for a cigarette and didn’t find one, his face twisted and he looked as if he was about to cry.  You had seen many grown men cry, but for some reason you felt that if Spike Spiegel shed a tear, something within you would break, and you didn’t know what that something was.

You sang, on that day.  Rainy days always made you sing, for some reason.  When the first chord warbled through your lips, almost inaudible amidst the drumming of the rain, his head snapped up, and he asked in a broken, cracked voice what song it was, and you stopped and said you didn’t know.  Closing his eyes and leaning back with a sigh, he asked, softly, embarrassedly,  if you would continue.  Normally, you would have mocked him for his softness, but the rain made you melancholy, and the melancholy made you kind.  You sang until your voice cracked.  

The next morning, when you had detached yourself from his skin that still smelled faintly of cigarettes, and he had woken up before you had to kick, he remarked pensively that he hated the rain.

You were tying on your smock by the door, and you turned around and saw him staring out of the window, at the dew-covered streets, the buildings still glistening with rainwater, the stray leftover drops dripping from the grooves in your roof.  

Smiling to yourself, you replied that you loved it, and he turned to you, one eyebrow cocked, and the sight made you laugh.

“It’s because,” you said thoughtfully, memories skipping through your brain like rocks on a pond, “the sky is so blue, so happy, so carefree.  And it’s nice to know that even the happy, carefree sky, that's so full of stars – well," and here you looked discontentedly out at the bustling city, "not here, you know, but still, it's nice to know that even the sky has to darken and cry sometimes.”   

You heard a snort, and a whisper of, “Sap,” and you threw a rag at his head.

* * *

Two days after the rainstorm, you asked him what he did for a living.  He smiled softly.

“I was a bounty hunter.”

“Oh, so you were a space cowboy,” you replied conversationally as you stacked pills on a shelf.

“Space cowboy?” he asked incredulously, and you could see his nose scrunching up without even having to turn around.

“Yeah,” you confirmed, turning to look at him.  “Cowboys back on Earth used to round up cattle.  Bounty hunters round up bounties, just in space.  Space cowboy.”

“That’s dumb,” he snorted.  

You shrugged.  “That’s just what they call them around here.”

“It’s better than scum, at least.”

* * *

The day before Spike was to leave, they came for you.  

You were sitting cross-legged next to the invalid, having lunch, when a fierce pounding resonated through the wood of your door.  You dimly heard your lunch break sign fall to the ground, and you gingerly set your plate down, standing up slowly, every nerve buzzing with energy.

“[First]?” Spike asked curiously, his cutlery clinking as it was set down, but you waved a hand to silence him.  

Before you could even get up to answer the door, it flew open, hitting the wall with a loud bang and cracking the timbers.  You were about to shout in protest, when you felt something cold and hard press into your sternum.

You heard the frantic rustling of blankets, but you held up a hand.  

“Don’t,” you said quietly.

“You’re the one,” the man in front of you growled, his lackeys peering at you and Spike from behind him.

“Possibly,” you answered nonchalantly.  

“Naw, she’s the one,” a voice piped up from the back, and you turned to see a man that couldn’t have been older than 18, sticking his head out from behind another, his face still bearing the pockmarks of youth.  “I saw her.  Treating him.”

“You were supposed to stay loyal to us,” the first man growled, pressing the cold hard thing more forcefully into your chest.  You heard something click.  

“I’m a doctor.  We aren’t loyal to anyone,” you pronounced defiantly, trying to seem brave with a gun pressed right over your heart.

“Well you were loyal to us when you treated our guy,” the man growled, leaning in towards your face.  The strong stench of alcohol and cigar smoke infiltrated your nostrils, and you tried your hardest not to cough.  “You can’t just treat a guy from another gang.  It don’t work that way.”

“He was hurt.  I helped him.  That’s all there is to it,” you said curtly.  

“I don’t think so,” the man replied with a sadistic smile, and his finger tightened around the trigger.  “If you’re going to treat the other guys, then we’re just going to have to make it so you can’t treat any of them ever again.”

“Then I can’t treat your men,” you argued, but there was a slight tremor in your voice.  You wondered what it would feel like, being shot in the chest.  You wondered if it would be quick.

“There are other doctors,” he replied smugly.  

“Yeah?” you began petulantly.  “And how many of your men have died from infections?  Hm?  Give me a number.”  The man balked, sweat beading on his brow.  He gulped.  “Go on.”

“A fair few,” he barked irascibly, shoving the gun so hard into your chest that you stumbled backward.  “But that don’t matter.”

“Really?” you bargained, merely stalling for time now.  “‘A fair few’ of your men dying because of some doctor’s incompetence?  That sounds like it matters to me.”

“Yeah?  How many have you lost?” he accused aggressively.  

“None,” you replied proudly, but it was a lie, a blatant lie.

He narrowed his eyes.

“[First]. . . .”

Shit.

“Not now, Spike,” you hissed, waving a hand.  The man, the leader, you assumed, blinked and looked behind you at Spike, and for some reason the six foot shirtless man in the corner had escaped his attention.  A dangerous grin stretched across his lips.

“Who do we have here?” he sang excitedly.  “I didn’t know you got around, Doc.”

“I’m treating him,” you growled.  “He’s not the one you came for, right?”

“Well, Doc, now that I’m thinking about it,” he chatted airily, his eyes glittering, “it would be a shame if you weren’t around to treat my men anymore.  But I’m sure it won’t affect your medical skills if he kicks the bucket, right?  I mean, this is just – payment.  For betraying us.”

“He has nothing to do with this!” you protested, your voice rising in pitch.  “Leave him alone!”

The tension in the room was rising by the second, you were sweating so badly that you were practically dripping, anxiety thrummed through you like an intense, sickening bass vibration and you wanted to throw up.  The leader was advancing toward Spike, his gun held lazily in his hand, as if he was just bringing it out to show it off, Spike was glancing from you to him and back, asking for directions, warnings, anything, but you couldn’t move, you had guns pointed at you from all angles, at this rate –

“Wait.”  Your voice rang out before your brain had even processed that you were speaking.  The leader stopped, slowly turning his head to look at you.  “I have something better.  There’s a shipment of weaponry coming into town in a week.  Leave me and him alone and I’ll get you access.”  Your voice was calm and steady and you didn’t know where this was coming from, your knees were shaking so badly you were about to collapse but you couldn’t be afraid, not now.  

“And how would you do that, sweetcheeks?” the leader questioned, and he was having so much fun, you could see it on his face, and it twisted your stomach and you wished for nothing more than to land a kick right in his smug little jaw.  

“I’m a doctor,” you reminded him irritably.  “You don’t think I have connections?  I treat all sorts of people.  A word here, a suggestion there, and I could get you everything you ever wanted.”

The leader turned around the rest of the way, his gun still held up slightly, ready.  “I’m listening.”

“Give me a week.  I’ll have everything sorted out by then.  Come back in a week.”

Suddenly the man was in front of you, his face eerily close to yours, his alcohol-tainted breath filtering into your nostrils and clogging your throat and his teeth were so yellow and rotten that you could barely look, but his face wasn’t much better, it was cold and hard and mean and god you just hoped –

“Alright then, sweetcheeks,” he drawled, his lips quirking.  “We’ll come back in a week.  But you know what happens if we get here, and we don’t have those guns in front of us.”

“Naturally,” you acknowledged, nodding slowly.  

With another grin and a beckoning gesture, he and his men filed out of your house, and you fell to your knees.

You heard Spike scramble up out of bed, and he was next to you, hand on your back, face close to yours, brown eyes wide with panic and you had never been this close to another man without blatant hostility involved, and it made your heart stutter.  

“Are you alright?” he fretted, eyes skimming over your frame.  

“Y-Yeah,” you breathed, placing a hand to your chest, and feeling your heart resolutely thudding beneath your fingers.  “Yeah.  That just scared the crap out of me, is all.  It’s happened before, but it never gets better.”  You laughed shakily, trying to calm yourself down.  

“You did good,” he soothed, his voice slightly impressed.  “Do you actually have that container of weaponry?”

You laughed.  “‘Course not.”

“Then what the hell are you gonna do?!” he spluttered.

“After you clear out, Spiegel, I’m gettin’ the fuck outta Dodge,” you explained with a thin, watery smile.  “It’s like he said.  There are other doctors.  I won’t be missed.”

“But are you sure you’re okay?” he repeated, his eyes searching over you once more.

“Yeah,” you answered confusedly, cocking your head.  “What’s the matter?”

“It’s . . .,” his vision clouded over.  “Nothing.”

Ah.  

There was silence.

“You’re such a sap,” you said softly, pinching his cheek playfully.  “Come on, sap.  Let’s finish lunch.”

His hand left your back as he scrunched his face up in disapproval, swatting your hand away,  but when the two of you sat back against the wall, he was so close that whenever he lifted his fork to his lips, his arm brushed yours.

* * *

A week came and went before you wanted it to.  You had memorized the date, burned it into your eyelids.  

The morning of, you woke up to a head resting on top of your own, and an arm curled around you.  As rational thought trickled into your brain, you realized that, yes, you had done it again.

But this time, he had done it too.

You had sidled your way up near his head, your face almost pressed into his neck.  Sometime during the night, his head had lolled against yours.  That was perfectly normal.  Something that happened all the time during sleep.  

But the hand on your hip, however, was not normal sleep behavior.

You had been using his outstretched arm as a pillow, but at some point the arm had slid down further, his elbow crooking around your waist, his hand coming to rest on your hip.

You wondered if he thought you were Julia.

The thought sickened you.

You flicked his hand off of your waist and shimmied out from his grasp.  As you emerged into the cold, open air, rolling onto your knees, he shifted, and you froze.  He frowned, the arm that had been under you sliding up and down the blanket, as if he was looking for something.  Apparently not finding what he was looking for – you? – his frown deepened and he seemed to rouse a bit, bringing up his other hand to rub at his eyes.  Slowly, he rose to a sitting position, eyes still closed.

“What’cha . . . doin’?” he mumbled sleepily, his eyes opening slightly.  “. . .Julia. . .”

Your breath caught in your throat.  You knew it.  Of course he would be thinking of Julia.  You were being stupid, just because you had slept next to an attractive man for a week.

“What’re you doing up, invalid?” you snapped instead, as if you hadn’t heard his remark.  His eyes slowly blinked open at the sound of your voice, and you rose to your feet in one fluid motion.  He looked up at you, his expression unreadable – blank, almost.

“The invalid was having a good dream,” he finally replied, falling back into the blankets.

“I’m sure,” you replied sarcastically as you headed towards the door.  “And I’m sure you can have plenty more when you’re back on your ship.”

There was a pause.

“That’s today?” he finally asked, and his voice was almost apprehensive.

“Yeah, haven’t you been keeping track?”

An incoherent murmur followed this, but you didn’t care enough to try to decipher it.  You had patients to treat, and a six foot invalid to lug across town.  

By noon, you had hung on a sign on your door saying, “Doctor out,” much to the protests of the people still waiting outside.  You simply ignored them, slipping Spike’s arm over your shoulder, checking to make sure everything was locked and set in place, and setting out.

It was a long, slow trek.  Spike couldn’t walk for very long periods of time, and he was goddamn heavy.  You felt like you would never get to the docks.  You almost wished you wouldn’t.

You got there, finally, and the only thing in sight was a big, brown, ugly piece of junk with its loading ramp down, and two people standing on it, waiting expectantly.  They saw you, or, more accurately, saw Spike, and started to holler.  

“That’s your ship?” you asked incredulously, wrinkling your nose.

“Yep,” he chuckled dryly.

As the two people ran closer, you managed to get a good look at them, and, well, you weren’t surprised that these were the people Spike traveled with.

There was a woman, with short, angular black hair, the bangs pulled back with an orange headband.  She was thin and spritely, with a posture that dared anyone to cross her.  She was wearing one of the skimpiest, most impractical outfits you had ever seen; a flimsy, low cut vest-jacket-crop top-bustier thing and the shortest pair of shorts you had ever seen, hanging extremely low on her hips and held up by black suspenders that curved around to her back.  Both articles of clothing were a shiny gold color, and seemed to be extremely uncomfortable.  She had a red jacket that she wore completely off of her shoulders, the ends tied around her waist.  You wondered what law of physics kept that thing up.

But the man couldn’t have been more different from her if he had tried.  He was tall, and muscular, with a shining bald head, extremely pointy, obviously painstakingly sculpted facial hair, and a large scar over his right eye, along with some sort of mechanical device beneath it.  As he came closer, you saw a mechanical left arm twinkle in the sunlight.  He was wearing some kind of shirt/armor/overalls combination, with a high, ridged collar and metal shoulder pads, and tall metal boots.  

“Excited?” you asked as they came closer, that same syllable, Spike, Spike, Spike, still falling from their lips.  He only grunted, and you chuckled.  “Come on, invalid.  Lighten up.  There’s no rain in space.”

He stiffened, and opened his mouth to say something, when the woman ran up, her shoes pounding into the pavement, her chest heaving as she came to a stop in front of you, her eyes brimming with emotion, and you couldn’t tell if she was about to hug Spike or start to cry, or both.  

“Spike!” she cried, her eyes flicking between the two of you.  “You’re – you’re –”

“Long time no see, Faye,” he replied flatly.

“Spike!” a booming voice shouted, and the man joined the woman, Faye.  “We thought you were –”

“Dead?  Sadly not.  Nice to see you too, Jet.”

“Who’s your friend?” Faye panted, her eyes flicking to you and staying there, sliding over your ragged clothes, your dirty face, your disheveled hair.

“The doctor,” you answered curtly, shifting Spike’s arm into a more comfortable position over your shoulder.

“You saved him?” she breathed.  You nodded.  “What happened to him?”

You looked to Spike, and his lips were pressed into a line.  “Nothing major,” he answered for you, his tone implying that this was not to be discussed further.  “A few scrapes and bruises.”

Faye nodded, her eyebrows lowering with suspicion.  You nodded to the man, Jet, gesturing to Spike.  Jet jogged over, lifting Spike’s arm from your shoulder with deft ease and dumping it over his own.  Maybe it was just your imagination, but Spike didn’t look too happy with the change.  

“Guess this is the part where I take off,” you sighed, stuffing your hands into your pockets and grinding the toe of your boot into the dirt.  “Nice meeting you two.”  You nodded to Faye and Jet, who nodded uneasily back.  You turned to Spike then, planning to say something snappy, like ‘see you, invalid,’ or ‘take care, Spiegel,’ but something stopped you.  There was something in his face, something in his eyes, something desperate, something – anxious?  You wondered if he was picturing you  with a gun pressed to your chest.  You sighed again, smiling softly.  “See you, space cowboy.”

You turned, and started to walk away, already making plans to move your things.  Maybe one of your former patients would help you.  Usually they were willing to do anything for the person that had saved their lives.  But what would you do with the house?  You didn’t know where all of your medical things would fit in another place –

“Wait.”

You stopped, your foot poised for a step.  That was his voice.

You swiveled, and he was standing there, abdomen exposed, his still-red scar clearly visible against his skin, the black stitches you had yet to remove crossing over it like railroad tracks.  He was standing away from Jet, who was staring at him curiously, arms crossed.  You waited.

He seemed to be struggling for words, his Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down, and he sighed irritably, running a hand through his hair.

“Come with us.”

Three spluttering voices broke out at the same time, jabbering through the air like a horde of angry birds.  

“Huh?!”

“Come with us?!  Spike?!”

“Spike, we don’t know her!”

“We didn’t know you,” he snapped to Faye, and she clamped her lips shut.  “We didn’t know Ed,” he directed at Jet, who scowled.  “She’s a doctor.  She’ll help us.”

“How do you know she’s not crazy?” Jet stage-whispered, and you rolled your eyes.  Men.

“I slept next to her for over a week, I think I would’ve smelled the crazy by now,” Spike replied exasperatedly.

“You slept next to her?!” Faye cried, her voice rising in pitch, and your cheeks flushed.  Goddamnit Spike you goddamn IDIOT –

“Just,” Spike began, and then stopped, sighed, ran a hand through his hair again, and turned back to his friends.  “Just trust me.”

They looked at each other, doubt evident in their expressions.  Jet was the first one to acquiesce, sighing and scratching the back of his neck.

“Well, if she’s crazy, we can always shoot her,” he acknowledged with a shrug.

“Comforting,” you snorted.

“Fine, fine, whatever you men wanna do,” Faye sighed, waving her hands in a gesture of surrender.  “It’d be nice to have another woman on the ship, though.”

“Do you have stuff you need to get?” Jet asked, looking you over skeptically.

“Yeah,” you said slowly, picturing the piles and  piles of things stocked inside of your tiny shack.  “I’ll need some help with those.”

Jet sighed, before gesturing for you to lead the way.  

“Get yourself inside, invalid,” you called to Spike.  “You’ve been walking for too long.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he called as he turned his back to you, waving his hand lazily, but you could hear the smile in his voice.

* * *

It took a few trips to lug your things onto the Bebop (as it was called, apparently.  You had laughed when Spike told you, and then you had realized he was being serious).  You hurriedly explained yourself to the locals as you tried not to lose your balance from all the teetering boxes in your arms.  A few of your former patients did pitch in (although you did occasionally have to keep playing the ‘you owe me’ card).  

Two hours later, the last crate of things were loaded, and you were getting a last look at the city you had called home for years.  The dock was empty, the wind was gusting, and Spike had decided to join you, though for what reason, you couldn’t say.  Jet called for you two slowpokes to hurry inside, and you exhaled, sliding your hands into your pockets.  Spike preceded you, making his slow way up the loading ramp, when a thought struck you.

“Hey,” you called, and he stopped, keeping his back to you.  “Why’d you ask me to come with you?”

“Well,” he sighed, sticking his hands in his pockets and slouching forward slightly.  “There’s no rain in space, but I thought you would like the stars.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i need spike spiegel in my life  
> he was the jean kirschtein before i watched attack on titan  
> i can't believe i didn't write a fic for him sooner
> 
> if you have prompts/questions, send them to my tumblr, jean--biscuit


	3. Easy Come, Easy Go...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love spike spiegel more than is healthy  
> please accept more of my trash

The Bebop was, well, small.  Very small, in fact.  There had been barely enough room for three people, and now there was a fourth crammed in.  There were no extra bedrooms to spare, so you had to camp out on the couch in what passed for the living room.  Jet had placed all of your medical supplies in the observatory type thing on the bridge, basically a long room with a giant semi-circular window at the end.  It had taken a lot of bargaining to get Jet to haul your operating table in, and it took you promising that you would cook dinner for two weeks for him to finally roll his eyes and agree.  

The first day was the most awkward.

Faye had walked you around the Bebop, showing you the bridge, her room, Jet’s room, Spike’s room, the bathroom, kitchen, living room, observatory, and last of all, Spike’s dinky little workshop, littered with machine parts and all other sorts of metal odds and ends.  Spike was lying on the couch in the living room, arm over his eyes, trying to conceal how hard he was breathing.  Sighing, you strode over, hands on your hips, and leaned over him, peering into his face.

“Tired, invalid?” you quipped, and he jumped at the sound of your voice.  He lifted up his arm slightly, glaring at you with one eye.

“I’m not an invalid anymore,” he grumbled.  

“You’re an invalid until I say otherwise,” you responded, plopping down onto the coffee table.  “Now, get your shirt off, I need to examine you.”  You waved your hands impatiently.

His face immediately reddened, and he spluttered, “You don’t have to say it like that!”

“If you’re not going to get it off, I’ll do it for you,” you said bluntly, your fingers already reaching for the buttons.

“No, I’ll do it,” he snapped, waving your hands away.  He slid his jacket off of his shoulders, tossing it to the side, and quickly undid the buttons of his shirt, throwing it in the same direction, his face still flushed.

“Just stay still,” you said, adopting your ‘doctor voice’ as you leaned over him, prodding the scar gently with your fingers.  You carefully tested each stitch, to make sure it was firmly cemented within his skin.  You ran your finger along the scar tissue, and he shuddered underneath your touch.  You tried to keep the blush away from your cheeks.  You were a doctor.  He was a patient.  Nothing more.  You started to press around on his abdomen, looking for signs of unusual firmness, and he shivered and a breath of air escaped his lips.  You looked up, and he was the color of a cherry, his eyes deliberately trained away from you, his lips tight.  The doctor within you panicked.

“Are you always this red?” you asked, your hand flitting up to his forehead.  He flinched, the blush deepening.  You started pressing on his abdomen again, and he snorted, his face contorting as if in an effort to hold something back.  Realization sparked inside you.  You grinned wickedly, skittering your nails across his skin.  He glared at you, lips clamped tightly shut, and you only looked at him innocently.

Spike Spiegel the bounty hunter was ticklish.  

As much as you would love to force a laugh out of him, something that sudden might rupture an organ, and as badly as you wanted to hear his laugh, it wasn’t worth the risk.

Snickering to yourself, you stood up, brushing your hands off on your pants.  He glared daggers at you, the blush gradually receding from his face.

“Well, Spiegel,” you sighed.  “I think it’s time to remove your stitches.”  He balked, his face going pale.  “It shouldn’t hurt too much.  Something a bounty hunter can handle.”  You winked, striding off before he could retort, your boots echoing on the metal stairs as you made your way up to the observatory.  Purposefully ignoring the window – you knew you would get reeled in and sit there for an hour before remembering you had shit to do – you rummaged through one of your crates, drawing out a pair of needle nose pliers, a scalpel, disinfectant, and a small dish.  

You made your way back into the living room, and you had to admit, it was a nice sight.  Spike Spiegel, a very attractive, well-muscled man, sprawled out on the couch, head hanging lazily to the side, his sharp jawline thrown into even sharper relief by the light overhead.  You banished the sight from your mind, shaking your head furiously as you made your way over and dumped your things on the table.  Spike jerked up onto his elbows, poised and taut, as if he was ready to run.  

“Relax,” you said irritably, rolling your eyes.  Placing a firm hand on his chest, right on his sternum, you pushed him back down.  He immediately went red again at your touch, and annoyance flared within you.  You were absolutely certain this guy had been touched by a woman before, so could he just keep his cheeks in check for one goddamn minute?

You went immediately to work, dragging the table closer to the couch and settling into position with your pliers and scalpel.  

“Ready?” you asked, looking into his face, and he nodded, his jaw clenching.  

Slowly, you severed the first stitch with the scalpel, two halves of the black thread laying neatly across his skin.  Grasping one end tightly with the needle nose pliers, you started to pull.  Spike squirmed, and you looked up grumpily.  “I can’t get this done if you keep moving.”

“I thought you said this wouldn’t hurt,” he groaned.

“It’s not supposed to hurt, you’re probably just wimp,” you retorted.

“Maybe you just did it wrong,” he snapped.

With an angry growl, you ripped the stitch out of his skin, and he yelped.  

“Don’t sass your doctor,” you barked crossly, pointing the pliers at him accusingly.  

“Don’t you have any pain meds?” he groaned, his head lolling over the arm of the couch.  

“Not any that won’t knock you out for a day.”

Groaning, he ran a hand over his face, and waved a hand, signaling you to continue.

At that moment, Jet appeared from the kitchen, holding a frying pan in his metal fist.

“What’s all the noise?” he asked grouchily, giving the pan a quick toss.  

“Spike can’t take the pain of removing stitches,” you quipped before Spike could get a word out, and he turned to you, his face livid.

Jet’s laughter reverberated through the room.  “Spike’s always been a baby,” he revealed with a grin, and Spike’s face grew even more furious.  Still laughing, Jet walked back into the kitchen, still sautéing whatever was in that frying pan.  

“Calm down, Spiegel,” you chuckled.  

“I’m not a baby,” he pouted, crossing his arms.  

“Are you gonna let me take out these stitches then?” you asked, tilting your head to the side.  He scowled at you, but nodded.

Settling back into position, you slowly removed stitch after stitch, gently tugging them from Spike’s flesh, until all that was left were a series of circular holes running down the length of his scar, which you quickly dabbed with disinfectant, wrapping his abdomen in gauze.  

“Try not to move too much,” you advised as you tied the gauze into a knot at his side.  “Or else you’ll bust something for sure.”  

“Mhm,” he responded, slowly bringing himself to a sitting position.  “Jet, you got a smoke?” he called into the kitchen.

There came a sound of rustling from the kitchen, and you snapped, “No smoking.  You’re already at risk for infection, inhaling smoke into your body is just gonna make it worse.”

“I’ve heard it all before,” he drawled as a cigarette came floating from the kitchen.

“Absolutely not,” you insisted, reaching up and catching the cigarette before Spike could.  You were trying desperately not to shake, but it wasn’t working.  You kept remembering it, the feeling as if your lungs were filled with cotton, every breath feeling as if the air had turned to rocks, the flames, your dirty, soot-streaked hands pounding rhythmically on her chest –

“What’s the matter?” Spike asked bewilderedly as you crushed the cigarette in your fist.  

“I just don’t get it,” you ground out, your head bowed.  “Why would you willingly . . . willingly suck smoke into your lungs?  Why would you poison yourself like that?  I just . . . I don’t get it.”

Spike sighed.  “Some people smoke to live,” he said tonelessly, and when you glanced over he was staring up at the ceiling, his eyes empty.  “I smoke to die.”

You shook your head  furiously.  “I don’t get that, either!  Why . . . why are you so eager to take it all away?  There’s so much to do . . . so much to see . . . won’t you miss it?” And here you looked at him, and he looked at you.  “Won’t you miss watching the stars careen by your windows . . . feeling a cool summer breeze on your face . . . watching children play in the streets, eating good food, laughing, smiling?  Why are you so eager to die when so many wish so desperately that they could live?”

“I’m not going through life to die,” he said.  “I’m going through it to find out if I’m alive.”

You leapt off of the table, your scalpel and pliers spinning away, and slammed your hand down on Spike’s bare chest, right over his heart.

“You feel it?” you hissed.  “As long as this,” you dug your fingernails into his skin, “beats, that’s all you need.  As long as you can still see and hear and taste and smell and feel, you’re alive.  What other proof could you possibly need?!”  He was staring at you bewilderedly, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open.  You tore your hand away from him and stalked off, steps ringing loudly on the metal floor.  You did not look back.

* * *

As much as you hated Spike at that moment, you had to admit, the bastard was right.

You loved the stars.

You sat in front of the observatory window, hugging your knees to your chest, watching as the galaxies whirled by you, as planets passed by in a flash of lights and space debris, as other ships dipped and darted in and out of your field of vision.  You wanted to cry.

All your life, all your goddamn miserable life, you had fought so hard to stay alive.  Fought tooth and nail, watched as others fell around you, and kept pushing onwards towards some goal that you couldn’t even see.  But you felt that you must push, you must keep going for some reason that you hadn’t quite figured out.

And along came this six foot muscled man with a wry smile and poofy hair who inhaled smoke into his lungs for fun and wanted nothing more than to die but didn’t know how to go about it.  You wondered when he had stopped fighting.

* * *

You sat there for hours, watching the stars go by.  Finally, when it started to burn every time you blinked, you decided it might be best to retire to your new bed, the living room couch.  It was better than your last sleeping place, but not by a lot.  Grabbing a pile of blankets, you made your slow, ambling way to the living room.

It was empty, and quiet, and absolutely heavenly.  Spike had vacated, to his room, presumably, and you were suddenly wishing you hadn’t come on this ship at all.  You could be in a different city, treating a different set of patients, making a different set of mistakes.  You dumped your blankets on the couch, shimmied out of a few articles of your clothing, and crawled into the mass of fabric, totally cocooning yourself.  Maybe if you were warm enough when you fell asleep, you wouldn’t wake up wishing for Spike’s heat.  

You fell asleep almost immediately, and you dreamt.  You dreamt of children running through the streets, through your door, of scorching summer days and the occasional cool breeze, of a front porch swing,  of the looming buildings of a city, of rusty fire escapes, of a warm body, and you were reaching for it, falling –

Except, well, you were actually falling.

Your arms windmilled, tangled themselves in the blankets, and you fell off of the couch, landing with a loud thud on your side. You groaned, flipping onto your stomach and resting your forehead on the cold metal floor.  You wondered who would come to check on you.  You were hoping for Faye.  You heard a light flick on, and you glanced up, untangling your arms from your blankets and sitting up, rubbing where you had hit the ground.  Footsteps rang on the floor, and you looked up, hoping to see Faye’s trim form, but instead you saw broad shoulders, long, lean legs, and a tuft of poofy hair.  

Perfect.

“You okay?” a tired voice called, and you heard fingers scrabbling for a lightswitch.  

Bright, too bright lights burst into existence, and you screwed your eyes shut, resting your forehead on the cool metal floor again, trying to hide the embarrassed flush in your cheeks.

“Fine,” you groaned, cautiously looking up, and Spike’s face was right in front of yours.

A small eep noise gurgled out from the back of your throat, and Spike’s lips quirked.

“Sh-shut up!” you stammered, and you were unable to suppress the blood rushing to your cheeks.  

“Why’d you fall?” he asked, cocking his head.  

“Not used to sleeping above the ground, I guess,” you said, but that wasn’t the reason, that wasn’t it at all, you had been reaching for that intense source of warmth that had been slumbering next to you for a week.  You could feel his body heat rolling off of him, and you almost sighed.  You wanted to just curl up against his side and sleep so deeply that you wouldn’t dream.  You had always been plagued with nightmares, but for some reason when Spike was next to you, you dreamt of nothing at all.  It was embarrassing, and stupid, and it didn’t make any sense, and you hated it.  

“This floor’s too cold for you, Doc,” Spike said, knocking against it, which jolted you out of your reverie.  He scratched at his chin, thinking.  “There really isn’t room anywhere else . . . the bridge gets too cold . . . and you don’t know Faye and Jet all that well . . .”  He suddenly grinned.  “You know, Doc, it’s kinda strange not having you next to me at night.”

You choked on your own spit, and coughed violently.  

He didn’t just . . .?!

“You’re not serious!” you spluttered as you gasped for air.

“Where else are you gonna sleep?” he questioned.  “You’re just gonna keep falling off the couch, and everywhere else is either too cold or too small.  And you and I are already used to sleeping near each other.”

Oh god oh god oh god oh GOD.

You wanted to.  You really, really wanted to.  

“What’ll Faye and Jet think?” you hissed, pulling your blankets tighter around yourself.

Spike shrugged.  “Who cares?”  He flashed that cheeky grin again, and you wanted to punch it off of his face.

“What, you want them to think you just brought me along so you could fulfill your nurse fantasies and have sex with me in your room?” you asked bluntly, and it was Spike’s turn to choke.  

“N-No,” he spluttered, waving his hands.  “It’s just – listen – I –”

“I get it, Spiegel,” you sighed, rising to your feet and gathering your blankets around you.  “I get tired of being alone, too.”  He went dead silent, and sighing again, you offered him your hand.  “Come on, invalid.  You shouldn’t be walking.”  

His large hand melded into yours, and you put his arm over your shoulder, supporting him as the two of you made your way to his room.

You still couldn’t quite believe you had agreed to this.

When you got there, Spike slid the door open, flicked on a light, and it was tiny.  Three sides of the bed touched the wall, with about three feet of dressing area on its open side.  The walls were lined with cubbies and closets, stuffed with clothes and various paraphernalia.  

Groaning, you collapsed onto Spike’s bed, admiring how much softer it was compared to the couch or the ground.  You cocooned yourself in blankets again, turning to face the wall.  You felt Spike sink down next to you, the light flicked off, and you could already feel his warmth reaching you through your layers of fabric.

You were determined.  You would not do it tonight.  You wouldn’t.

* * *

You woke up, and you had done it.

Except it was a little different this time.

You both were on your sides, facing each other, your nose was pressed into his chest, his arm curled around your shoulders, his legs entangled with yours.

Before, it had been him on his back, you at his side.  But now he was crushing you to him, and he was warm, deliciously warm, and you briefly entertained the idea of just waiting until he woke up as well, just to see what he would do.  Would he look down at you and grin that idiotic grin of his?  Or would he bolt away from you, repulsed at being so close?  

On second thought, you didn’t want to find out.  You slowly untangled yourself from his grip, rising on your hands, preparing to slide off of the mattress.  You took one last glance at his face, and stopped.  It was neutral, calm, at peace.  His eyebrows weren’t lowered, for once, there were no bags under his eyes, his frown lines were wiped clean.  A sheen of light stubble was growing around his jaw, and you slowly, involuntarily reached out your hand.  Your fingers stopped centimeters from his skin.

God, you were horrible.

You slid off of the bed with a groan, shivering as your feet met the cold metal ground.  You stretched luxuriously, your tank top rising slightly above your navel.  You heard the shifting of fabric behind you, and turned to see Spike yawning, scratching at his stubble, and looking at you with bleary eyes, his expression slightly troubled.  It was such a stark contrast to his peaceful sleeping expression that it almost irritated you.

“Geez,” you sighed, leaning towards him, bracing yourself on the bed with one hand.  “Can your eyebrows even go up?”  You placed your finger right between his eyes, and he jumped.  You pushed his brows upwards, and chuckled at his shocked expression.  “There,” you said, standing back.  “Better.”

“You can’t just move a man’s eyebrows without permission,” he grumbled as he slowly made his way off of the bed.  

“I’m your doctor, I can do what I want,” you replied, placing a hand on his shoulder as he wobbled to his feet.  

He merely grunted in response, leading the way out of his room.  It occurred to you then that you had no idea what time it was.  Did time exist in space, really?  Well, of course it did, but not by a clock’s standards.  It was neither morning nor evening, the sun was always constant, a faint glow in the distance, and there was no moon close enough for you to see its light.  There was only the light of the stars, reeling slowly by.  

You followed Spike into the dark living room, and heard him flop onto the couch with a sigh. You flicked on the light, and made your way over to the kitchen.  

The ship was eerily silent.  You two must be the only ones up.  

The kitchen was small and cramped, with a small stovetop and oven, a fridge, an assortment of dilapidated cabinets, and only about three feet of counter space.

Sighing, you opened the fridge, and were greeted with the pale, sickening sight of empty shelves.  Frowning, you then rifled through the cabinets, and found vegetables of questionable ripeness, a few cans of food, a collection of cracked and dirty glasses, plates, and bowls, and three loaves of bread, one of which was growing mold.  

You wrinkled your nose in disgust.  Weren’t these people supposed to be rich, being bounty hunters?

Groaning, you filched a can of black beans and the best-looking loaf of bread out of the cabinet, rummaged under the counter for a worn frying pan, and spent five minutes trying to get the burner to light.  

You placed a slice of bread in the pan once it had warmed, tossed it a few times, and dumped the beans on top of it.  Once things were sizzling, you loaded the concoction onto a cracked plate, flicked off the burner, and strode back into the living room.  Spike was lying on the couch, arm draped over his eyes, his chest rising rapidly up and down.  Geez, he was that tired from walking from his room to here?

“Breakfast, Spiegel,” you called, but he didn’t respond.  Frowning, you walked over, gingerly setting the plate on the coffee table, and flicked at the exposed skin of his forehead.  “Come on, Spiegel, you just woke up.”  Still, not a twitch.

Your heartbeat starting to quicken, you dragged his arm away from his face.  His eyes were closed, brows narrowed, his lips slightly parted, breaths coming in rapid spurts.  His face was tomato red, and you knew it wasn’t from embarrassment this time.

In full panic mode, you ripped open the buttons of his shirt, exposing the red, inflamed, swollen incision.

Swearing loudly, you ran full tilt towards the observatory, your bare feet skidding on the smooth metal.

As you rummaged through your supplies, throwing things over your shoulder in your search and hearing them skitter away, all you could remember was your friend, collapsed in a chair, the sound of a flatlining heart monitor filling the air with its somber pronouncement.  She had been breathing heavily, eyes obscured by her bangs, her hands shaking in her lap.  

And then she had laughed softly, looking up at you as you stood by in horror, your eyes never leaving the limp, pale body, riddled with infection, the smell pressing into your nostrils so forcefully that you had wanted to vomit.  So many patients had come in, by rushing ambulance or frantic family vehicle, and so many hadn’t ever left, but this was the first time you had seen it.  And her tired eyes had found yours, lined with stress and weariness, and she had whispered it, so softly, so defeatedly, but it had still rung in your head so loudly that it hurt, and it was ringing now, reverberating between your ears and filling you with a sense of dread you hadn’t felt in a while.

“Easy come, easy go.”   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah uh i have no idea where this story is going. i'll figure it out along the way i guess
> 
> if you have questions/prompts, send them to my tumblr, jean--biscuit


	4. Do You Have A Comrade?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh hey look more of this trash because i love spike spiegel more than i have ever loved anything else in my entire life.

_Do you have a comrade?_

No.  No you don’t.  

Empty houses, empty streets, empty people, empty you.

What else could be taken?

_Do you have a comrade?_

You don’t know.

She smiles a lot, even with blood up to her elbows and death in her nostrils.  She makes you a cup of tea in the mornings and sits with you when you wake up screaming at night.  You have seen too many die.

You ask her to teach you how to save, and she does.

_Do you have a comrade?_

No.  

Flames like sunsets, black smoke pillars, soot-streaked hands, still chests made sure of that.

You were wrong when you thought you had lost it all.

_Do you have a comrade?_

Yes.  Yes.  

You hate his cocky smile and willingness to throw his life away.  You are not sure what you love, or if you even can.

You now know that you have many things to lose.

You are determined not to lose any more.

_Do you have a comrade?_

Maybe not for long.

* * *

You didn’t know what to do.

He wouldn’t wake up.

You held his face in your hands, feeling the skin burn beneath your fingertips.  You had cleaned out the incision, dressed it, given him some water, forced some beans down his throat.

“Come on, Spiegel,” you urged, giving him a small shake.  He only lolled, his brows still furrowed, his breaths still coming in harsh pants.

You cursed loudly, kicking the table with as much force as you could muster.  The poor piece of furniture skidded to the other side of the room and slammed into the wall, knocking off everything that had been sitting atop it.  

Your noise had woken up Jet and Faye, who immediately rushed in to see what was wrong.  When they rushed in, and you saw their eyes take in Spike’s unconscious form, his incision swelling, his chest rising and falling unnaturally fast, you wondered if they would shoot you right then.

Jet looked at you had you looked at him and tried to convey something with your eyes that you would never have been able to put into words.  He scowled at you. His hand twitched.  

“Please,” you got out.  “Help me carry him.”

Without a word, he lifted Spike off of the couch.

The meaning was clear.

If you let Spike die, your safety was no longer guaranteed.

* * *

You were with him day and night.

You wrapped him in blankets and put cool cloths on his head and cleaned out his incision by the hour.  

You had expected this.  Prepared for it.  Waited for it.  But now that it was here you felt outrageously cheated, like life had pulled the wool over your eyes.

The incision started to show signs of improvement.

Spike did not.

You rummaged through your mismatched collection of pills, grinding things up and mixing them together in the hopes that it would make things better.  

It didn’t.

You only left the observatory for meals, and even then you were only gone for a few minutes.  

One evening, as you finished wolfing down your dinner and were getting up to throw the plate in the sink, Jet asked you if Spike was going to die.

You froze in place and looked back at him.  He and Faye were sitting at the table, clutching mugs, their gazes trained towards the table.

“I don’t have the right things to treat him,” you replied.  “I need penicillin.”

“We could take him to a hospital,” Jet suggested hopefully.  You shook your head.

“You don’t have enough money to pay for it.”

“Isn’t there penicillin in mold?” Faye asked.  “Can’t you make some out of that moldy loaf of bread in the kitchen?”

Again, you shook your head.

“That takes around two weeks, and even if Spike were to survive that long, there’s lots of other things in mold besides penicillin.  Giving him tainted medicine would kill him faster than the infection ever would.”

Faye sighed, twirling her mug in her hands.

“What do we do?”

An idea came to you, an uncomfortably familiar idea.  Your stomach twisted.  It would be dangerous, very dangerous, and yet ridiculously easy.

“Can you two watch Spike for a few hours?” you asked, your voice low, and they both snapped their heads up.  

“Where are you going?” Jet asked warningly.

“To make money,” you responded, already walking away.

* * *

Half an hour later, you strode out of the observatory in a skin-tight low-cut latex tank top, a pair of latex shorts, tights, and boots, your hair brushed, your cheeks rouged, your lips painted red.

Jet glimpsed you from the couch, and his mug shattered on the floor.

“I promise you that whatever you think it is, it’s not,” you assured, fixing large silver hoops in your ears.  “It just seems like it is, and that’s the point.”

“Small comfort,” he snorted.

“I’ll only be gone for two hours,” you said as Faye walked in, saw you, and did a double take.  “If I’m not back in three, take him to a hospital.”

“What’ll happen to make you an hour late?” Jet asked.

“Don’t you know, Jet Black?” you replied with a grim smile. “The sorts of things that happen to a girl in a big city.”

* * *

The city was a strange, large, loud, miasmic, familiar and yet unfamiliar place.  Every one of them felt the same, and different.  Each had its scum, each its rich, each its cover-ups.  The streets were crowded, and you were uncomfortably reminded of your hovel, the cold, grey streets where you had first come upon Spike Spiegel.  You would’ve never imagined you would be doing something like this for a patient.  You snorted.  You must’ve caught insanity from him.

You made your way through tall metal warehouses, your boots clicking uncomfortably in the silence.  You had made Jet land in an abandoned warehouse district, on some moon that seemed somewhat densely populated.  You saw lights growing in the distance, and your feet started to throb.  These boots were too small a year ago, and now you were certain your feet were bleeding.  You stepped gingerly, tentatively, rolling the balls of your feet as you stepped to find a place where it didn’t hurt to tread.  You just hoped it added a nice rolling to your gait.

Finally, you emerged suddenly onto a busy street, crowded with noodle shops and shady businesses.  People were loitering all over, hanging out of windows and chatting to friends below, smoking on street corners, slouching on curbsides and whistling at passing vehicles.  You attracted quite a few stares as you walked, but you were hardly the one showing the most skin.  You were dressed like the other girls, but you hadn’t yet fallen to doing what they did.  

You found a small, smelly bar with a faded neon sign of a busty girl chugging a mug of beer protruding from its front.  You couldn’t even read the name of the place, the type was so faded.  These types of places were perfect for businesses such as yours.  Harder to trace illicit activities when the meeting spot didn’t have a name.

You walked in, boots clicking on the cracked tile floor, and you immediately attracted every male gaze in the room.  You took a seat at the bar, trying to remember how to sit the way they did, leaning way over onto the bar counter and placing your chin in your hand.

God, you were rusty at this.  

Your eyes swept the room, automatically weeding out the ones with uncombed hair and tattered clothing.  Not many of the rich came through here, but the ones that did always came for one thing.

You hoped you looked expensive.

Tonight was your lucky night, you supposed, when a rich looking one strode over immediately, hands shoved in his pockets, his shoulders eerily straight, a cigar clenched between his teeth.  He was short, and round, with an expensive looking suit, its waist buttons so strained they looked ready to burst at any moment.  His head was sleek and bald, reflecting the bar lights like a well-polished mirror.  You felt sick just looking at him.  

“How much?” he asked bluntly, leaning over towards you, the cigar sprinkling ash onto the rough wooden surface of the counter as he spoke.

You looked him over, numbers running through your head.  You had to find the right number, cheap enough that he wouldn’t walk away, but enough so you could buy medicine.  Penicillin ran for around 2500 Woolongs around here, but it could be more if it was in high demand –

“3000,” you said coolly, tapping your finger on your cheek.

The man whistled.  “That’s quite a bit,” he said reluctantly, fiddling with the cufflink of his sleeve.

“Fine, then.  I’ll find someone else,” you said breezily, turning away, and you heard him shift.

“Alright,” he finally grumbled, and you grinned.

Sliding off the barstool with a definitive click, you sashayed out of the bar, anxiety thrumming through your every nerve.  The night air was cool on your skin, the stars twinkling almost laughingly above you.  Spotting a sufficiently dark alley, you stepped into it, beckoning with a coy finger.  

The man followed excitedly, his large belly bouncing on his thighs.

As soon as his shining bald head no longer reflected the light of the moon, he advanced toward you, arms outstretched, and you swept his legs out from under him.

He hit the ground with squishy flop, his fat jiggling, and you placed your foot on his ribcage, bashing his temple with your elbow.  He shivered, and fell still, out cold.

You rifled through his pockets with nimble fingers, drawing out his digital wallet.  Tapping a few buttons, you drew out your own, synced them, and in the blink of an eye you had 3000 woolongs sitting prettily in your bank account.

Stuffing your digital wallet back down into your cleavage, you tossed his onto his chest, and strode out of the alley, satisfaction warming the pit of your stomach.  

Idly fiddling with the belt loops of your shorts, you surveyed the jumbled collection of signs sticking every which way out of the surrounding buildings.  There were restaurants, erotic shops, grocery stores, cigar shops, laundromats, banks, but finally in the distance you spotted a blue sign with a white plus, and practically bounded towards it, not even minding how much your feet hurt or how uncomfortably tight your shorts were.

You were dressed too skimpily to be looking that happy, you were sticking out like a sore thumb, but you didn’t care, really you didn’t.

You waltzed into the clinic like you owned it, sliding your wallet across the counter and asking for a bottle of penicillin.  The cashier looked you over critically, taking in your exposed cleavage,  stomach, and legs, and sniffing disdainfully.  They rummaged under the counter, and brought up a small white bottle of pills.  They gingerly scanned your digi-wallet, and the computer seemed to take three years to process it.  Your fingertips drummed on the counter, your foot tapping rhythmically on the ground.  Finally came the satisfying ding, the cashier pressed a few more buttons, slid you back your digi-wallet and bottle of pills, and you practically leapt out of the place.

You wanted to sprint, but knew it would attract too much attention.  You settled for a brisk walk, your stomach doing happy flips.  You felt like a kid again, bounding through the streets after a successful candy purchase, and it felt so nice.  A cool breeze filtered down between the tops of the buildings, and you gulped it in, shivering as the frigid air filled your chest and settled throughout your body like a comforting melody.  You weaved through the crowd as you had done when you were smaller, slipping between bodies and slithering against storefronts, the bottle of penicillin clenched in your fist.  

Gradually, the crowds started to lesson, and taking a sharp right, you entered the tall, imposing warehouse district, and ran through it, not caring if there was anyone to hear.

You spied the Bebop in the distance, still bobbing dutifully in the harbor, and you grinned.  You jogged up to it, ringing Jet up on your comm.  The ship shuddered to life, and the landing deck slowly lowered.  Jet came rushing out, and the two of you spoke simultaneously.

“Jet, I got the – !”

“He’s awake – !”

You both ground to a halt at the other’s words.  You kicked into action first, tugging off your boots and tucking them under your arm, sprinting further into the ship.  Your bare feet slipped and slid over the metal floors, and you were almost certain you tore the bottom of your right one on a bolt, but you couldn’t care less.  You skidded into the observatory, barely making the turn, and Spike was up, barely, conversing with Faye.  

They both looked up, and Faye said something, but your eyes were trained on Spike.

His eyes lit up at the sight of you, but then something clicked, and he took in your cleavage, your stomach, your legs, the hoops in your ears, the boots tucked under your arm, and his face grew horrified.

“What did you do?” he whispered in dismay.

“I got you some meds, Spiegel,” you responded happily, your mood far too high to be trampled.  You tossed the pill bottle in the air and caught it, grinning triumphantly.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he insisted, shaking his head.  

Sighing, you strode over and knelt in front of him, unscrewing the cap of the pill bottle.  “Listen, Spiegel, just take one of these –”

“[First],” he said firmly, grabbing you by the arm, and that made you stop in your tracks.  He had never called you by your name before.  You looked into his eyes, really looked into them. “How’d you get that money?” he asked slowly, his eyes traveling over you again.  “You didn’t – you didn’t let someone –”

Oh.

“Christ, Spike,” you groaned, rolling your eyes.  “Of course not.”

“Then, how . . .?”

“I just lured one into a trap, is all,” you replied with a shrug, forcing a pill between his lips and handing him a glass of water.  “Led him into a dark alley, knocked him out, and took the amount I needed.  He was rich, he didn’t need it anyway.”

Spike scowled at you, his adam’s apple bobbing as he reluctantly swallowed.  

“You didn’t do anything else?” he asked again, and you sighed.

“No.  I swear.”  You held up your hand in a gesture of promise, raising your eyebrows questioningly, and he frowned, but settled backwards, releasing his grip on your arm.  “Thanks for your help, Faye,” you said, turning to the woman who was still kneeling beside you, watching you and Spike attentively.

“No problem,” she sighed, slowly rising to her feet.  “Just . . . take care of him, would you?”  

You smiled, nodding.  “‘Course.”

She strode out, hands in her pockets.  You hoped she would grow to like you, because you already sort of admired her.

“Now get some rest, Spiegel.   I’m gonna change out of these god-awful clothes. Try not to look,” you added with a small grin and he reddened, sputtering that he wouldn’t.

Laughing, you stood, walking towards a cardboard box labeled “clothes.”  You drew your usual ensemble out of it, and with one last look at Spike, who was staring resolutely at the ceiling, you started to undress.

And god, was it weird.  

You had never changed in front of a man before.

You drew your digi-wallet and comm out from your cleavage, and slid out of your tank top.  The latex stuck to your skin and made uncomfortable noises as you wrestled it off of yourself.  You could only imagine what Spike was thinking about.  You wriggled out of your strips-of-cloth bra, and your full back was bared to him.  

You heard shifting, and an intake of breath.

Whipping around furiously, a shirt clutched to your chest, you cried, “You looked!”

“N-No!” he stuttered, his face flushing.  “It was just – y-your scars –”

Blinking, your eyes widened.  

You had forgotten about those.

“Oh,” you said softly, looking down towards the ground, the shirt still clutched in your fingers.  “Yeah.  I got those in a fire.  Years ago.  I’m sure you have scars of your own, bounty hunter.”

“Plenty,” he responded quietly, settling back once more.  

They were ugly scars.  Long, grotesque, mottled.  They were the remnants of third-degree burns and shrapnel driven deep into your back.  Protecting someone was nice, but only if they survived.  

“Alright, Spiegel,” you said briskly, turning back around, and you were a sight in your loose, belted brown shirt and your tight latex shorts.  “Now you honest to god really can’t look, or I swear I will gouge your eyes out.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said tiredly, his arm covering his eyes.

Huffing, you quickly slid off your shorts, the goddamn fabric sticking to your skin, and oh god oh god if he looked now –

But then you were in your leggings and pulling your shirt over them and you hadn’t heard a single twitch  You turned around, and Spike was still staring at the ceiling.   

Impressive.  You had assumed all men were the same.

“I’m amazed,” you quipped, and he jumped.  You strode back over to him, plopping down at his side.

“At what?” he grumbled, lifting his arm to look at you.

“I’ve never known a man who wouldn’t sneak a peek at an undressing woman,” you responded, placing your chin in your hand and studying him quizzically.

“I’m a gentleman,” he sniffed, sitting up slightly.  

“‘S fine,” you said with a shrug.  “It’s natural to want to look at the naked body of the gender you’re attracted to.”

“You make it sound so weird,” he groaned.

“Because it is,” you said.  “Attraction’s just – weird.”

“Ohoh, what lucky man stole your heart?” he asked, propping himself up with some blankets.

“Oh, so he’d be lucky if he had me, huh?” you smirked, and he ground to a halt, his face going red.

“That’s not – no – I mean –”

“You’re cute, Spiegel,” you giggled, reaching over to pinch his cheek.

“Am not,” he snapped, swatting your hand away, which only caused you to giggle more.

“Well,” you sighed, leaning back on your hands.  “You can’t go through your whole life without loving someone.  And it’s just weird.  You love the strangest people.”

“Hm, speaking from personal experience?” he asked idly, leaning back on his elbows and looking at you curiously.

“I know you’ve loved before, Spike Spiegel,” you responded.  “You tell me.”

He snorted.  “It sucks more than anything.  It sucks so bad you don’t even notice the strangeness of it,” he said bitterly, his gaze darkening.  “It sucks so bad, and it’s cold more than anything.  It’s only warm when it wants to be, and then it leaves you out in the rain.”

You were about to mock his poetic train of thought, but bit back your words.  He was talking about Julia.  “It’s for fools.  Only fools fall in love.”

“Maybe,” you acknowledged, shrugging.  “But it’s nice to be a fool in love.”  He looked at you, cocking his head.  “It’s almost like the world, see,” you went on.  “It’s only warm when it wants to be, it leaves you out in the rain.  But it also helps you live.  It gives you sunrises and sunsets, beginnings and end, you love it when it’s warm and hate it when it’s cold and start the cycle over again, and it slowly destroys you, but that’s okay.  It’s nice to live a life with fleeting moments of warmth, rather than one floating in the dull cold. You can’t stay on a spaceship forever when there’s a whole world waiting for you below.”  

“How do you know?” he cut in, and his voice was tight, fraught with emotion.  “How do you know it’s like that?”

“Well, being a doctor, I can’t say for certain if we have a soul,” you responded, placing a hand on your chest.  “But it feels really nice, right here,” you tapped your sternum, “when you love someone.”

“All I feel is cold,” he grumbled.

Right then, you wanted to hug him, touch his shoulder, something. You couldn’t even bear the thought of feeling cold every second, every minute, every hour of the day, and you wanted to show him what warmth was like, even if just for a moment.  You wanted to curl up in his chest and twine your arms around him but you knew that you were being horrible, he still loved someone, and even though her heartbeat had long stopped, that didn’t make the love hurt any less.

“Is that why you smoke?” you mused.  “Maybe –”

“Okay, Psychoanalyze Spike Spiegel hour is now over,” he said curtly.  “I’ve known enough shrinks to know that they’re no good for you.”

“You’re so bitter,” you laughed.  “I almost can’t take you seriously.”

“Yeah well, the same world you love so much also makes you bitter,” he retorted testily.  

“When was the last time you had a hug?” you asked in disbelief.

“Don’t need ‘em.  Physical affection is for squares,” he said breezily, crossing his arms.  

“Oh, Spike Spiegel’s too cool for hugs, is that it,” you said casually, sliding closer to him.  

“Can you please just get me a cigarette,” he grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Hugs are supposed to be good for you, you know.”

“Go hug Faye.  I’m sure she needs one, too.”

“I’m sure she’ll stab me if I try to touch her,” you snorted.

“What makes you think I won’t?” he asked, shooting you an attempt at a menacing glare.

“Usually people who are going to stab you don’t invite you to sleep with them,” you commented with a triumphant smirk.  He opened his mouth to say something, blushed fiercely, closed it, and opened it again.  “Easy, Spiegel,” you urged, flicking his forehead, which resulted in a loud, annoyed “Ow!”  “Get some rest, you’ve been sick.”

“Mhm,” he grumbled, gathering up the blankets near his chin.  “Are you getting in or what?” he mocked.  

You shook your head, and he blinked.  

“I’m already at significant risk for infection, so I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse your request for now,” you said, dragging your pile of blankets a foot away from him.

“You could catch this?!” he bleated, his face going pale.  

You nodded.  “Granted, I don’t have any open wounds, so I won’t get it as bad as you, but yeah.  I’m your doctor.”

“Well, what happens when you get sick?!” he asked, his tone panicked.  “You’re the doctor, for Christ’s sake, you’re not supposed to get sick!”

“I’m still human,” you replied with a small smile.  “I’ve probably already caught it, in fact.”

“Well if I get the doctor killed, we’re all fucked,” he groaned, placing a hand over his eyes.

“Relax,” you laughed.  “Maybe I haven’t caught it.  I’ve built up a lot of antibodies over the years.”

“Well, if you’re gonna catch it anyway,” he suddenly said very quietly, turning over so his face was hidden from you.  “You might as well sleep with me anyway.”

“What, you enjoy sleeping with me that much?” you chuckled, but your heart was fluttering against your will.

“The nightmares don’t wake me up when I’m with someone else,” he said softly, and you froze.  “I don’t know why.”

“Sap,” you sighed, and he bristled, turning to glare at you.  “Move over.”  You shoved him aside with a few elbow pokes, sidling into his blankets and pulling them over your shoulder.  “You know what happens if they find us, right?”

“Don’t care,” he yawned.  “It’s better than waking up screaming.”

“So even the great bounty hunter Spike Spiegel has nightmares,” you muttered, your eyelids already starting to flutter.  Now that you were lying down, cocooned in all this warmth, sleep seemed like a very good idea.

“People with scars as big as ours don’t dream easy,” he stated softly.

“You got that right, Spiegel,” you agreed as you shifted backwards, your back colliding with his.  

A few moments of silence passed.  You watched a comet drift by out of the observatory window.

“What good are we, Doc?” he asked softly, his voice tight, and you heard him turn over.  

“Who knows, Spiegel,” you responded.  “We’re good to each other.”

He chuckled.  “Yeah.”

You turned over, and he was facing you, his eyes inches from yours.  His lips, too, you noted, but you immediately abandoned that thought.  

“Are you cold, Spike?” you asked.

“Yeah,” he answered.

Without a word, you hugged him.

But hug wasn’t the right word.

You shimmied towards him, your cheek brushing against his, wrapping your arms around his neck.  You pressed your face into his bare neck and sighed involuntarily.

“Everyone needs a hug every once in a while,” you murmured against his skin, and you felt him shiver.  

You started to pull away, and his arms stopped you, circling around your waist and pulling you right back.

“Could you – could you stay?” he got out, and you knew he was thinking of Julia and you hated being a replacement but his arms felt so nice around you.  

“Yeah.  Sure, Spiegel.”  A shudder passed through him, and he clutched you harder, his lips brushing against the skin of your neck as he buried his head there, his hair tickling against your cheek, and oh god you could imagine it, but you shouldn’t.  Your hand went to his head, involuntarily twining in the dark, wavy locks.  “Just – do me a favor.”

“Mm?” he hummed.

“Don’t call me Julia when you wake up.”

He was already asleep, his soft breathing curling over your skin.

The stars reeled in their fixed positions.

* * *

_Do you have a comrade?_

  
  


You didn’t know what he was.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm probably moving spike and reader's relationship along way too fast because they both have shit to work through but the thirst is REAL and DANGEROUS  
> this was heavily HEAVILY inspired by This Bitter Earth by Dinah Washington and Max Richter   
> i suggest you go listen to it and cry like i did
> 
> if you have questions/prompts, send them to my tumblr, jean--biscuit


	5. Sleeping Beast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well here we are again and the thirst has not depleted

Waking up in someone else’s arms was rather pleasant, you discovered.  There had been far too many nights when you had woken up with your back pressed against a cold, hard wall, your arms reaching out towards the darkness, your body curled into itself to manufacture some semblance of warmth.

His face was still pressed into your neck, your nose brushing against his shoulder.  His arms were tight around you, his breathing soft, deep.  

Stars were spinning outside the window, and you briefly, desperately wished for slanting rays of morning sunlight.  This perpetual night was foreign to you, and it was messing with your sense of time in a way you didn’t like.  

Sighing, you dragged yourself onto your elbows, Spike’s head drifting off of you.  Reaching behind you, you gently pried his fingers apart, unlocking his arms from around your body.  You slowly sat up, crossing your legs and stretching luxuriously, your fingers reaching towards the distant metal ceiling.  As your muscles uncoiled, you looked down at Spike’s sleeping, peaceful face, wisps of his dark wavy hair falling in front of his eyes, and warmth fluttered in your chest.  Leaning forward, silently, effortlessly, you brushed the wisps away from his eyes, and lightly pressed your lips to his forehead.

He was warm.

As you rose out of bed, and pulled your share of the blankets over him, he stirred, cracking open one hazy brown eye.

“Mornin’, Doc,” he murmured, rolling onto his back.

You hummed in response, grabbing the bottle of penicillin and shaking a capsule out.  “Take this.  You have a fever.”

“Do I?” he slurred, but took the pill nonetheless, swallowing it in a shaky gulp.  

“Just stay in bed today,” you sighed, combing your fingers through your hair.  “You’re still recovering.”

“As long as you stay with me,” he mumbled as he burrowed deeper into the blankets.

“You’re delirious, Spiegel,” you said exasperatedly, but your heart was beating a staccato rhythm inside of your rib cage.  

“Mm . . .,” he responded, his eyes fluttering closed again.  “Hey, Doc . . . grab me some grub, would you?”

“If you can stay awake that long,” you grumbled, but you rose, and strode out of the room, pausing at the door to stare back at him, his feverish, sluggish body tangled in a heap of blankets, his flushed face peeking out, his eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks.

What an idiot.

You stumbled out into the living room, yawning widely, to find Jet and Faye sitting on the couch, watching the TV.  They were both smoking, and the air sure as hell showed it.  Smoke drifted in front of the light fixtures, swirling around the room as they huffed it out in large puffs.  Your stomach roiling, you took a deep breath and charged through, the sickening smell of tobacco assaulting your nostrils.

“Mornin’,” Jet said, grinding you to a halt.  Dammit.  “How’s Spike?”

“Fine,” you got out, trying not to suck in a breath.  “Fever.”

“He’s better though, right?” Faye questioned, blowing a cloud of smoke off to the side.

You nodded, your teeth set rigidly.  “He wants food.  What do we have?”

“Not much,” Jet sighed, knocking his cigarette against an ashtray balanced on his knee.  

“I’ll go out and get some, then,” you said, your voice strained, your lungs starting to burn.

“Where?” he asked incredulously, blinking at you.  “We don’t have any money.”

“There’s always some grocer with a medical problem waiting to be fixed,” you said curtly, crossing your arms in front of you.  

“Fine, fine,” Jet sighed, waving the hand that held his cigarette.  “We’ll stop on the next populated planet.”

“Much obliged,” you sighed, saluting lazily, before trudging stiffly back to the observatory, desperately trying not to take huge gulps of the smoke-choked air.

As you entered the observatory you stumbled forward, gripping the door frame, your knuckles white, your fingers scrabbling at your chest as you took large gulps of the wonderfully clean air.  God, you could still remember it, the flames licking at the ceiling, the coils of smoke filtering around your face and into your nostrils and lungs and suddenly feeling as if someone had stuffed cotton down your esophagus –

“Didja get my food, Doc?” a sleepy voice called, violently jolting you from your trance.

“Huh?” you asked bewilderedly, your heart threatening to break through your sternum.  

“My food,” Spike groaned, running a hand over his face.  “I’m starvin’.”

“O-Oh,” you stuttered, running a hand through your hair in an effort to calm yourself.  “Yeah, I-I’m running out to get some later.”

“You okay, Doc?” he mumbled, turning his flushed face towards you and narrowing his eyes.  “You sound funny.”

“I’m fine,” you said brusquely, striding over and crouching down next to him.  “Now let me feel your forehead.”

You gently placed your fingers on his skin, and calming warmth radiated through your fingers.  He was still far too warm to be healthy, but he was getting better.

“How’m I lookin’, Doc?” he queried, peering at you from under your hand.  

“Fine,” you said shortly, drawing your hand away.  “You’ll be fine in a few days.”

“Good to know,” he sighed, settling back down into his blankets, and within 30 seconds he was fast asleep, light snores rumbling through his parted lips.

Rolling your eyes, you turned around, watching as the Bebop slowly veered downwards towards some planet, the red Gates blinking dully in the distance.  The ship slowly rumbled out of hyperspeed, decelerating with every Gate it passed through.  Finally, it was hovering above some port, and landed with a jolt in the rolling waves.  

You grabbed a few things from your stores, a few capsules of pain meds, a few herbs, disinfectant, balms, and bandages, stuffing them in the pockets of the cloak you draped over your shoulders.

You strode through the ship, hood drawn securely over your head, hopping off of the landing ramp before it was even all the way down.  You heard Jet holler something at you, but you only waved a hand in reply.  As soon as you were out of sight of the Bebop, you crashed against a nearby warehouse, turning your face up to the sun and taking deep gulps of the wonderful, fresh, un-recycled air.  And oh god there was a breeze, rippling across your skin and there was solid earth beneath your feet and the sky and clouds above you and you realized at that moment how much you loved having access to the outside world.  When you’re in a spaceship and the only thing out the door is the endless black void of space, it really puts things into perspective.

You strode along the docks, a small bounce to your step, hands swinging at your sides, weaving in-between the crowd on the balls of your feet.  You swiveled as a grocery sign swung by your head, and saw a rotund, balding man leaning against the counter, yelling out his bargain prices, his left hip jutting out.  He was favoring his right leg, and whenever he shifted his eyebrows would twitch slightly.  

“Morning,” you chirped as you slid up to the stall, flicking your hood away from your face with a practiced twitch of your head.  The man looked up at you, eyes narrowed, and grunted in response.  You smiled, lips pressed tightly shut, and went to surveying the food, picking up an apple and pretending to study it as you eyed his posture, his stance.  “May I ask,” you began, twirling the apple in your fingers, “what’s wrong with your leg, sir?”

“None of your business,” the man snapped back, brushing his apron over it.  

“Just asking,” you said breezily, watching the apple spin in your palm.  “I’m a doctor from Mars, and I was just wondering if I could help.”

“From which sector?” he grunted, eyeing you curiously.

“If I was from the ‘other’ sector, would I have ever left?” you asked, grinning slightly.  

“Fair enough,” the grocer sighed, leaning heavily on the counter.  “What’ve you got for me?”

“Well, if I can have a moment of your time,” you said, placing your hand on your hip, “I’d just like to examine you to determine what the problem is.”

“Examine how?” he barked, eyebrows twitching.

“Nothing major,” you assured.  “You just have to answer a few questions and move your leg a bit.”

Suspicion still prevalent on his face, the grocer slowly nodded, beckoning with a fat-fingered hand.  You ghosted around the counter, cloak whispering, and gestured for him to move the apron away from his leg.  He reluctantly complied, and you bent down slightly, peering at it.  It was swollen, and his hip was jutting out farther than was normal.

“Did you misstep recently?” you queried, glancing up at him.

He grunted.  “Nothin’ big.  Took a kick from some punk-ass local kids.”

“You’ve fractured your leg,” you declared with utmost certainty, rummaging through a pouch in your cloak.  “Take these.”  You tossed a bottle to him, and he caught it with fumbling fingers.  “Wrap it.”  You tossed him bandages.  “Keep weight off it.  It should be better in a month or so, I should say.”

The doctor examined the pain meds appreciatively, and then suddenly jolted, looking up at you, his face livid.

“How much is this gonna cost?” he asked dangerously, squeezing the bottle in his fist.  

“Well, sir, if I can propose a trade . . .,” you said casually, throwing your gaze to the counter lined with food.

He scowled.

* * *

You sauntered back onto the Bebop with five fish, a package of rice, three heads of lettuce, ten packets of instant noodles, a dozen packets of instant soup, a dozen bell peppers, a jug of olive oil, a pound of beef, and other assorted vegetables and spices.

When you strode onto the Bebop, a wide grin on your face, and proudly displayed the food in your arms to Jet and Faye, you would have paid anything to capture the look on their faces.  

“Wh-wh-where?!” Faye spluttered, jogging over and poking the fish with a finger as if to make sure it was real.

“I told you,” you said with a shrug.  “There’s always a grocer with a medical problem waiting to be solved.”

“You got that much?!” Jet asked incredulously, blinking at the piles of vegetables.

“Well,” you said slowly, “I bargained a little.  Pissed him off a little.  Good thing we’re not going back.”  They still stared at you, dumbstruck.  “What?  How do you think a woman on her own survived for as long as I did?”

Sighing, you walked toward the kitchen and dumped your assortment on the counter and setting to work, immediately filling the fridge and cupboards and throwing the old things into the trash.

“Never thought you would do it,” Jet said in awe from the doorway, scratching at his beard.

“Well, I did,” you replied happily.  “Now, go crazy.”  You waved your hands, and he immediately obeyed, stooping to peer in the fridge, and you thought you saw a tear come to his eye.

Shaking your head, you strolled back to the observatory, pulling your cloak off of your shoulders as you went.  You came in to find Spike sitting up, scratching his head and peering around the room.

“Feeling better, Spiegel?” you asked, throwing your cloak onto a nail by the door, and he jumped.  

“Marginally,” he grumbled.  “Did you get my food?”

“Jet’s making it now,” you replied, crouching down next to him and feeling his forehead.  “I can move you into the living room, if you want.”

“Yes, please,” he sighed happily, and you chuckled, placing a steadying hand on his shoulder as he wobbled to his feet.  You kept it there as he stumbled out of the observatory,  keeping your body close to his.

You made sure he was safely on the couch before collapsing next to him, lolling your head backwards onto the cushion. Faye was seated in a nearby armchair, reading a magazine, and she nodded to the both of you when you came in.  Her legs were crossed, foot bouncing up and down to some unknown rhythm. There were sounds of sizzling and pan-crashing and shuffling coming from the kitchen, and the hustle and bustle soothed you.

“What’s cookin’?” Spike called, and the sounds paused.

“Qing-jiao-rou-si,” Jet replied happily, and you heard a pan toss.  

Spike groaned loudly, pinching the bridge of his nose.  “I’ve told you,” he yelled, “it’s not bell peppers and beef without beef!”

“Except,” Jet practically sang, ambling out of the kitchen, two plates and pairs of chopsticks in hand, “we have beef.”  He handed the first plate to you.  “For our generous benefactor.”  You grinned, snapping the chopsticks in half.  “And for the invalid.”

Spike was gaping, looking from you to Jet and back.

“B-Beef?” he stuttered, staring in shock at the plate in his hand.  “How?!”

“I fixed up a grocer down on terra firma,” you replied, chopsticks poised over your plate.  “We decided on a trade.”

“Was he at least cute?” Faye piped up as she received her own plate, and you laughed.  Spike was watching the exchange quietly but with obvious interest, his eyes flicking between the two of you shrewdly.

“He was 300 pounds and the sun reflecting off of his head almost blinded me.”

Faye chuckled, twirling some bell peppers around her chopsticks.  “I mean, if he was cute,” she began, stuffing a chunk in her mouth, “your job would’ve been a lot more fun.”

“Could be,” you said with a shrug, your fingers tightening slightly on your utensils.

“Oh, come on,” Faye teased, her voice muffled through the bell peppers stuffed in her mouth.  “Don’t tell me you’ve never done it before.”

“What, have you?” you shot back in an attempt at playfulness, stuffing more food into your mouth to avoid further discussion.

Faye wasn’t having any of it.  “You’re kidding!” she exclaimed, setting her chopsticks down with a clatter.  “You haven’t!”

“It’s a long story,” you said curtly, swallowing nervously and subsequently shoving more food into your mouth.

“We all have long stories,” Jet commented as he strode in, his own portion of food in hand.  “It’s probably about time we heard yours.”

“At least you’re not tied up,” Faye grumbled into her plate, and Jet rolled his eyes.

“Might as well grab a smoke for this,” Spike mumbled, running his hand through his hair and looking at you for approval.

“Fine,” you sighed, shoveling the last of your food down your throat and setting your plate down on the coffee table with a clack, “just don’t smoke more than three.”

Spike grinned and caught the cigarette and lighter Jet tossed to him with eager fingers.  He immediately lit it, took a drag, and exhaled a large cloud of smoke into the air, smiling lazily.

You sighed again, licking your lips nervously.  “I should start at the beginning, I guess.

“I was born on Mars.”  Spike straightened slightly.  “Everyone always says that Mars is the best place for the rich, but for some reason the opposite end of the spectrum always flock there.  I was shoved out of my mother in some tiny hamlet in some tiny crater, in the middle of an epidemic.  There were bodies lining the streets, the smell of death always in the air.  Or so I’m told.  I don’t remember.  I don’t remember my parents much, either.

“After about two years of life it was discovered that I was the only resident who wasn’t sick.  Couldn’t get sick, more like.  So, naturally, word got out, and scientists took me away to study me for antibodies, or superhuman genes or something.  The only thing I remember about that day was my mother crying, and my father at her shoulder.  He was really sick, I think.  Funny,” you chuckled, your eyes tilting up towards the ceiling as you leaned backwards into the couch, “I can’t even remember what their faces looked like.

“I never saw my parents again.  I never went back to that hamlet.  By the time I was taken into the big city to a research facility, apparently the sickness had spread almost everywhere.  I was called the Wonder Kid, because I was supposed to save the planet.”  With a sudden crash, Jet leapt to his feet, but you didn’t even flinch.  You looked up evenly, and his fists were clenched at his sides, his body poised to spring.  “Ah,” you said softly as he groped for the gun at his waist.  “So you know me.”

“Jet!” Spike cried, jumping up as well, throwing a hand in front of you.  “What’s the problem?!”

“Haven’t you heard of her, Spike?” Jet growled, his gun pointed right between your eyes.  “She –”

“Let her finish,” Spike growled, and the tension in the room tripled.  Faye was curled up in her chair, watching the exchange carefully, her hand fluttering to her hip as well.

“Down, boy,” you chastised, grabbing Spike by the waistband of his sweatpants and dragging him back down to the couch.  “I can take care of myself.”  You looked straight into Jet’s eyes, and you didn’t even feel afraid.  The only thing thrumming in your chest was resignation.  “How about I finish, and then you can decide if you want to shoot me.  Hm?”  You raised your eyebrows questioningly, and Jet slowly lowered the gun.  He sank back into the chair, his hands still securely wrapped around his pistol.  “Now then,” you sighed.

“I’m sure you guys have been in the hospital at least once.”  Your eyes flicked between them.  “But have you ever been a test subject?  I don’t think you know how awful it is.”  Your hand went instinctively to your right arm, rubbing in slow circles.  “If you’re afraid of needles, don’t volunteer.  They just – stick things in you,  day in and day out, and you have so many tubes in your arms that you start to wonder how much of you is real anymore.  Now, I could probably deal with it now, but imagine a two year old kid having to deal with that.   All I remember is being petrified, the white coats, the needles, the pain –” You shivered involuntarily.  “That’s a tough place to grow up in.  No one was all that nice to me.  I was just an object to them – a thing they were studying.  

“Eventually, they managed to make a vaccine, and Wonder Kid had saved the planet.  I thought I was finally free.”  You scoffed dryly.  “My face was plastered everywhere.  I was around seven at the time, and the vaccine had been released just when the sickness was at its peak.  But the epidemic had raged for almost a decade, so of course people were wondering why this hadn’t happened sooner.  There were riots.  Protests.  That’s tough when you’re seven.  Being the hero, and suddenly becoming the villain.  It’s a tough pill to swallow.

“And so the scientists, being the jackasses that they were, promised the masses that they were positive Wonder Kid had more in store for Mars – cures for age-old diseases, genes to enhance the human body – they spewed all sorts of shit.  But, naturally, they followed through.  I was in there until I was 15.”  You heard someone suck in a breath, but you didn’t look up to see who.  “By then, I was a wreck.

“It’s tough spending a few days in one of those places, but an entire childhood?  I’m not sure I can even explain it to you.  I still have the scars.”  You pulled up your sleeves and bared your arms to the crowd, the hundreds upon thousands of needle marks, burn scars, incisions long healed over.  Your arms were almost entirely comprised of scar tissue, and just the sight of them sickened you.  “There’s more elsewhere,” you continued, nudging your sleeves back down.  “But that’s not the point.  When you’re 15, you know, you’ve got all this shit roiling around inside your head, all these dangerous ideas.  And being locked up for years, well, it gets worse.  And one day, it just . . . came to a head.

“It was early, around nine, I think.  I was being given my morning pokes and prods, as per the usual.  Things had been running through my head for the past couple of weeks.  Dangerous things.  I was lying on one of those hospital beds, machines beeping around me, and there was this tray, full of scalpels, right next to me, within reach.  I think they were planning to take skin samples or something.  And one of the doctors prodded me wrong, and I just – snapped.  It’s funny how the weirdest things can set you off.

“And I just grabbed one of the scalpels, and that’s about the clearest thing I remember.  I killed a lot of them, though.  Just in blind rage.  I killed anyone who got in my way.  And I remember stumbling out into the sunlight, and it burned my skin because I hadn’t been outside in like 13 years, and I was just covered in blood, and people started screaming.  So I ran.

“I didn’t know where to go.  I just ran.  I don’t know if they looked for me.  I just kept running, never stopping, never spending two nights in the same place.  I lived on the streets for a few years, ‘till I was about 18 I think, scrounging food out of dumpsters, bathing in the run-off from gutters.  I didn’t know how to talk to anyone, I couldn’t really talk at all, so I had no one.  No one at all.  But I was used to it.  And, you know, being a girl, people tried to attack me.  I had no martial arts training whatsoever, but I always won.  I didn’t play by anyone’s rules, so I played dirty.  Real dirty.”  You grimaced at the memory.  “Soon enough, everyone learned to leave Crazy Scalpel Girl alone.  It got even lonelier after that, because now absolutely no one wanted to come near me.  

“One night, I collapsed in an alley, certain I was going to die, and I was okay with it.  And then, the next morning, I woke up in a warm, soft bed with a person leaning over me.  Of course, that set off every bad memory I had, so I leapt up and scurried into the corner like some sort of animal.  And I saw a woman, early twenties, with the kindest eyes I had ever seen on a person.  She helped me.  Her name was Sam.

“It took me a bit to speak around her.  She would always talk to me, though.  She was a doctor, she said.  Fixed up people she found on the street for free.  After a bit, I was tired of seeing everyone die around me, so I asked her to teach me how to save people.  And she did.”  You smiled softly, but your gaze quickly grew solemn.

“There was a fire.  I don’t know how it started.  Some idiot left the stove on, probably.  Sam was the last one out.  She made sure everyone got out before her, even me.  She had to push me, though.  When she finally got out of the building, she was covered in soot, but mostly unhurt.  And then she just – collapsed.  She was scrabbling at her throat with her fingers, and I gave her CPR but . . . there was nothing I could do.

“And so I moved on again.  Got a hut in a bad part of town, started a business, and that’s where Spike came in. That’s it.”  You slowly rose to your feet, and Jet didn’t move a muscle.  He was staring at you, gun held loosely in his fingers, his eyes taking in the lines in your face, the tired firmness in your eyes.

“Wait,” Spike called, smoke billowing from his lips.  You were already halfway out of the room, but you turned to look at him curiously.  “If your doctor friend didn’t burn to death then . . . how did she die?”

You smiled grimly, your eyes flicking to the cigarette perched between his lips.

“Smoke inhalation.”

* * *

He was right, you reflected.  

You were pressed up against the observatory window, your breath steaming against the glass.  You were hugging your knees tight to your chest, your chin resting atop them.  Your eyes followed the stars as they flew by, and you were breathless.  You watched as the cosmos reeled by, you made a wish on every comet and tried to find a constellation within every cluster of stars.

You only dimly registered the observatory door creaking open, but decided that Spike could get himself into bed for once.  It was only when he plopped down beside you that you jumped.

Irritation broiled within you.  You were done talking for the day, maybe even for the week, wasn’t it obvious?

“You know,” he sighed, staring wistfully out into space, “I’ve seen these stars so many times, that it’s boring, seeing them now.”

You snorted incredulously, all previous irritation at being spoken to gone.  “That’d be like getting bored of eating.  Every time you eat, it’s a little different.  Even if it’s the same dish made exactly the same way, it’s different.  Every time you look at the stars, even if it’s the same goddamn cluster, you notice something different.”

“You must have better eyesight than I do,” he mumbled.

“That’s because you’re not looking,” you insisted, grabbing his chin and jerking it roughly in the same direction you were looking in.  “Go on.  What do you see?”

“Stars,” he grumbled stubbornly, and you grit your teeth.  

“Obviously.  Are they big stars?  Little stars?”

“They’re little specks.  Like freckles,” he said flatly, and his eyes flicked to you.  “Are we done with the public school art lesson yet?”

“No,” you growled, giving his head a shake to turn his gaze back to the constellations.  “And if you kept looking and looking, you would notice that the stars aren’t just a cold hard grey, they’re a myriad of colors, dark greens and blues and reds and purples all mixed into some sort of nebula that you can only glimpse one form of for half a second before it changes again.  How could you ever be bored of that?”

He grunted.  “So they’re like people, then?”

“You could say that,” you said slowly, releasing his chin.  “Yeah.  I guess they are.”

“Did I out-metaphor the Doc for once?” he joked, leaning backwards on his hands.  

“Congrats, Spiegel, you got deep for once,” you retorted, nudging him in the side.  

He was about to respond.  It was going to be a sweet moment, you were sure.  

That is, until the Bebop went careening so suddenly sideways that you both were thrown against the opposite wall.  

You landed on top of Spike so hard that you heard the air whoosh out of his lungs, and you panicked, you must have punctured something, burst something, ripped something –

“You okay?!” you asked anxiously, scrabbling around to get a look at his face as the Bebop just as abruptly righted itself.  You managed to break his fall as the two of you went tumbling back to the floor, and this time it was you knocked breathless.

You gaped like a fish as you struggled to force air down your throat, your arms trapped between you and Spike, your fingers fruitlessly pushing against the hard muscles of his chest.

“Spike,” you managed to gasp, your lungs starting to burn, and he groaned in response, shifting slightly.  “Spike,” you insisted, your fingernails scrabbling across his skin.  A slow trickle of air was starting to flow back, but it wasn’t nearly enough.  “Spike!”

At your cry he jumped, his arms windmilling as he flopped backwards onto his knees.  Air suddenly rushed back into your system and you took big gulps of it, coughing violently as you sat up, hands placed gently over your sternum as if to aid in the process.

“You okay there, Doc?” Spike moaned, rubbing his head.

“Marginally.  You’re fuckin’ heavy, Spiegel,” you panted, taking deep, wonderfully deep breaths.  “More importantly . . . what the hell was that?”

Spike’s face was grim.  “Well, not to alarm you . . . but it seems as if we’re being boarded.”

“You don’t sell drugs on the side, do you?” you asked suspiciously, slowly rising to your feet.

“Haha.  Of course I do,” he replied sarcastically, and you rolled your eyes.

“Who would it be then?” you asked as you trudged over to your medical supplies.

“The Syndicate, possibly,” he murmured, and you heard fingers scratch stubble.

“Don’t they think you’re dead?” you questioned as you rummaged through a crate, the sound of clinking metal ringing through the room.

“Well, without a body,” he said pointedly, and you stiffened angrily, “it’s not certain.”

“You’re lucky I saved your ass, Spiegel,” you retorted, drawing a large scalpel out of the crate and holding it up for inspection.  

“Mhm,” he replied as you slipped the blade up your sleeve.  “Shall we go greet our company?”

“Gladly,” you sighed, leading the way out of the room.

Jet and Faye were poised in the living room, guns held up, fingers tight on the triggers.

“Who’re our guests?” you asked as you entered, and both pairs of eyes flicked to you before darting away again.

“Hell if I know,” Jet grumbled as you and Spike completed the square of people facing all sides of the room.  “We’re just gonna have to wait and see.”

Increasingly louder thumps were echoing throughout the ship, and your fingers tensed at your sides, your thumb brushing the handle of the scalpel tucked against your wrist.  

Five people burst into the room from each side, two from the landing ramp entranceway, each holding large black guns and in full military attire, with round black helmets.  Crudely painted eels coiling around a spear glared at you from the nearest man’s helm.  

Something in you snapped.

You charged faster than lightning, your foot swinging out and catching one of them right in the side of the head.  He fell, and did not get up.  Bullets rang out, you heard someone cry “Wait!” but you didn’t even hesitate, you were already on to the next one, your knee colliding with his chin, the gun spiraling out of his hand.  You felt something fast and hot fly by your head, leaving your right ear ringing, but you still didn’t stop, scalpel flashing as you jammed the handle right into the third’s temple.  He choked, his eyes rolling back in his head, and he crumpled.

The last two came at you simultaneously, guns poised, shouting some command, but you couldn’t even hear them, the blood was pounding too loudly, your heart beating too erratically, the memories coming too thick, too fast.  You grabbed one muzzle, twisting it roughly.  A sharp cry of pain met your ears, and you ducked, sweeping your leg out, catching one pair of legs.  As the man thumped to the ground you were already moving on, the last one yelling with fear evident in his eyes, the muzzle of his gun shaking as he pointed it at you.  You deflected it with a flick of your wrist, and before the poor guy knew what had even happened, your scalpel was flush with his jugular vein.  

Silence fell, the calm only punctuated by the man’s ragged breathing and the soft groaning of the others rolling around on the ground.

“What the hell?!” you heard Jet cry.  

“Don’t worry,” you replied evenly, your gaze still intent on the young soldier’s.  “These men and I are acquainted.”

“Acquainted how?!” Spike spluttered.

“See that sigil?” you answered, gesturing to the soldier’s helmet with a jerk of your chin.  “That’s the logo of the bastards who experimented on me.”  Shocked silence fell, the kind that sucks in lips and tightens throats.  “What are you here for?” you barked at the young man, and he jumped.

“Y-you,” he stammered, squeezing his eyes shut, waiting for the pain.

“Figures,” you grumbled, sighing exasperatedly.  “Why now?”

“Th-they were always looking for you,” he answered, cracking open his eyes.

“I was literally under their goddamn noses for years and now that I’ve migrated to the black abyss of space they find me?!”

“I-I don’t know!” the man cried, flinching away from you, but he was pressed against a wall and you were on him again, gaze fierce.

“I have half a mind to throw all of you idiots out the airlock,” you growled, and his Adam’s apple bobbed against the blade of your scalpel.  “But I don’t want to give the police another excuse to be on my ass.”  You lowered the blade, slowly, deliberately, and the young man collapsed to the floor.  “But let me be clear,” you said quietly, crouching down so your eyes were level with his.  “If you ever come back, I’ll kill you.  That’s a promise.  Leave.”

The man nodded fervently, scrambling away from you towards his comrades.  He loaded two onto his back, looking nervously from the remaining two to you and back, apparently wondering what you planned to do with them.  Rolling your eyes, you grabbed the two by the collars and dragged them behind you, following the soldier through the ship to where they had busted through the airlock.  

“Here?” you snapped, and the man jumped a foot in the air, nodding furiously.  You threw the men roughly onto the ground, and the soldier winced.  “Might as well call your buddies now, sport, because I’m locking you in here.”  You slid out of the room, pressing the panel to close and lock the door.  

The last thing you saw were the young soldier’s wide, terrified eyes.  You heard rumbling, the docking of a ship, the whooshing of the airlock opening, the sighing sound of it closing.  

Footsteps clanged behind you and the whole Bebop crew was there, looking anxious and terrified.  You were still holding your scalpel in your hand.  It was unsoiled, clean.

“How did you do that?” Faye breathed, looking you up and down.  “I haven’t seen anyone fight like that since –” She stopped, her gaze flicking behind her to Spike, whose expression was unreadable.

“Didn’t I tell you?” you said dryly, your gaze dark.  “Everyone on the streets learned to stay away from Crazy Scalpel Girl.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoyed! i don't know what i'm doing with my life anymore


	6. Life is But a Dream . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who's back with more stupid spike/reader trash  
> warning for nsfw wink wink

You went back to stare at the stars.  Spike did not join you.  You knew they were discussing you.  Debating whether or not they should put a bullet between your eyes.  And yet, you found you did not care.

Hours passed, or minutes that seemed like hours.  Your thoughts were empty, blank, with occasional flashes of warm smiles and white hospital rooms.  Your eyes started to burn after a bit.

You dragged yourself over to your pile of blankets, and as you were about to shimmy under them, the observatory door creaked open.  You turned, fully prepared to be seized and shot, but only Spike entered, looking exhausted.

“You got my evening dose, Doc?” he yawned, curving backwards as he stretched.

“Sure,” you replied tonelessly, plucking the bottle from a nearby box and shaking a capsule into your palm.  You handed it to him wordlessly.

After he gulped it down, he sighed, and trudged towards the door.  You did not follow.

As he was walking out, he stopped, turned back towards you, a question on his lips.

“Aren’t you . . .?”  He did not finish the sentence, and it irked you.

“You sure you want Crazy Scalpel Girl to sleep next to you?” you snorted, crossing your arms in front of you.  He frowned slightly, rubbing the back of his neck, his gaze turned away from you.  You wondered if you resembled her.  “You loved her a lot, didn’t you?”

He jolted, his gaze slowly sliding back to yours.  “Once upon a time,” he murmured.

“I get it, you know,” you said, silently cursing the tremor in your voice.  “When you lose someone . . . you feverishly grab hold of anything that reminds you of them.  You hold it close, because you’re afraid . . . you’re afraid of losing more of them than you already have.  I get it.”

He sighed.  “Don’t worry.  You’re nothing like she was.”

“I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take that,” you grumbled, and he laughed softly.

“Wasn’t it you who told me, Doc?  ‘Regret is a useless emotion,’” he said.

“So you finally learned something,” you quipped, and he rolled his eyes.  “But even after my violent display today . . . you still wanna be around me?”

“Like it or not, you’re stuck with me, Crazy Scalpel Girl,” he said, a grin curling across his lips.  

A lump grew in your throat, something warm, familiar, and long-forgotten stuttering through your chest.  No one else had ever stayed, not after they had seen you take out multiple people in the span of seconds, not after seeing you press a blade to someone’s neck without even a hint of remorse or hesitation in your eyes.  Not even Sam.  Granted, she had never seen you snap.

“Idiot,” you choked, and followed him out.

* * *

Naturally, the next morning, you woke up pressed against him.  He smelled like cigarette smoke and stale spaceship air but you didn’t even care, he was warm and you were just a placeholder for Julia but you just didn’t care anymore, you didn’t care what you were as long as you could stay this warm forever.  Something bubbly and vaguely idiotic fluttered inside of you and you wormed yourself even closer to him, tightening your grip around him.

“Idiot,” you whispered, tears choking your throat.  “I don’t know what to do about you anymore.”

You would stay until he woke up.

* * *

The shifting of something in your arms woke you.  Your eyes slowly fluttered open, to see nothing but the pale blue of Spike’s shirt.  He was moving, slowly rousing, and you panicked, snapping your eyes shut, straining your ears to listen.  You heard a yawn, felt a jolt, heard a soft intake of breath.  

“Doc,” he murmured, and summoning your inner actress, you slowly shifted, turning your head upwards and blinking slowly at him.  You didn’t have to fake the blush that rose to your cheeks.

“Oh hey,” you mumbled, making an attempt at nonchalance with a lazy smile.

“You’re . . .,” he said slowly, his gaze traveling over how tightly his body was entangled with yours.

“You wanna know somethin’, Spiegel,” you said as an answer, because you were going to get straight to the point, you were determined.  You were tired, so tired.  “You’re the first ever person who’s seen me snap, and decided to stay.”

“You make me sound so special,” he snorted.  His arms did not move from their positions around you.

“It means a lot to be warm,” you answered, “to someone who’s been cold for so long.”

“Do you ever stop speaking in metaphors?” he grumbled, a hand coming up to brush at your hair.  

“No,” you replied happily, sidling upwards until your face was level with his.  There was quiet for a few moments, as his fingers twined in your hair and you stared into the deep brown of his eyes.  “Promise me . . .,” you began, studying the lines and contours of his face, “that you don’t wish I’m her.”

There was silence.  Awful, awful silence.  

“Her last words to me,” he said, staring straight into your eyes, the right one dull and glassy, “were ‘life is but a dream.’”

“Who’s speaking in metaphors now?” you chastised.  He smiled slightly.  “And life’s not a dream, Spiegel.  It’s not even a nightmare.”  You placed your hand over his heart, the steady beat thrumming against the pads of your fingers.  “The only dream is believing that death will wake you up.”

“Maybe it would,” he said, his gaze darkening.  “How would you know?”

“Death and I are close friends,” you murmured, your chest constricting.  “If you’re not going to believe anything else I say, Spiegel, at least believe this.  Death is not the answer.  Only life can bring hope for change.  Death will not benefit you, it will not make you feel better, because the dead do not feel.  The only dream is believing that this,” your fingernails dug into his skin, right over his pounding heart, “doesn’t matter.  And that’s a foolish dream.”

“Fools dream foolish dreams,” he argued, a grim smile fluttering at the corners of his mouth.

“Perhaps,” you admitted, “but even fools live.”

“Living’s exhausting.”

“You think you’re the only one who’s exhausted?”

“I can imagine,” he commented, and maybe you were hallucinating but his face maybe, possibly, slid closer to yours.  “So I propose we sleep the day away.”

“Are you trying to seduce me, Spike Spiegel?” you scoffed, and a blush spread over his face.  

“I – er –”

“Idiot,” you laughed.  “I know you still love her.”

“Regret is a useless emotion,” he mumbled, his breath curling over your face, and you shivered because he was so close, move forward a few centimeters and –

“There’s something to be said for taking time to mourn,” you said breathlessly, desire roiling in your abdomen, he was close, so close, almost every inch of him pressed against you, and yet, and yet, he wasn’t close enough –

“I’ve spent my whole life mourning,” he replied, and you wondered how he would react, if you –

“Shitty way to live a life,” you breathed.

“How do you do it?” he asked.  “Live.”

“There’s always something left to love,” you whispered, pressing forward in one smooth motion.

He tasted like cigarette smoke and bell peppers but god you couldn’t find it in you to care, your fingers were curling in his hair and his arms were crushing you to him, his hands wandering over the curve of your spine.  His lips were softer than should be possible, his mouth experienced, deft, and oh god you had never done this before, you were a quarter of a century old and you had never kissed anyone before and fuck fuck fuck you were doing everything wrong.

He flipped you onto your back, his mouth insistent, eager, his hands sliding over your hips and up your sides, and there was a fire burning inside you like you had never felt before, like a dam that had long since started to crack finally bursting.  Every single emotion towards Spike Spiegel you had tamped down burst upwards in a cacophony of colors, his hands seared over your ribcage, fingers fluttering delicately over your scarred and pockmarked skin.  

You broke away for air, your heart threatening to burst, your breathing erratic, shallow.  

You were pleased to notice he was similarly affected, his hair even more mussed than it usually was, his face flushed, his chest heaving.

“Have all your doctor fantasies come true?” you quipped with a sly smirk, and he scowled, his blush deepening.  

“Shut up,” he breathed, and kissed you again.

“How long?” you giggled as his mouth strayed over your jaw.  

“Who knows,” he breathed against your skin, and you shivered.  “You’re just warm.”

“Everyone’s warm, stupid,” you mumbled irritably, and he chuckled.

“She was always cold,” he responded, his hands inching higher up your abdomen, “like an autumn breeze, something that comfortably settles over your shoulders but gets tiring after a while.  You start to freeze.”

“It’s bad luck to insult the dead,” you quipped, and laughed as he rose up for a second and shot you a glare.

“You’re like the sun,” he continued, dipping down to kiss your neck.  

“And you say I always talk in metaphors,” you chastised, when his teeth grazed a sensitive spot and you sighed.

“Space gets cold,” he went on, his arms circling you.  “Let’s just stay here for the day, okay, Doc?”

“Jet and Faye will get suspicious.  They’ll go looking for me in the observatory, and then the jig will be up,” you protested, but your body was melting against his, your arms circling his neck, your hands curling in his hair.

“Who cares,” he mumbled, nuzzling into the junction of your neck and shoulder.  

You hummed in response, sinking further down into the mattress.  He was heavy, sure, but it was a nice weight.  His body melded to yours like putty, his breathing was soft, curling across your skin like ripples across a pond.

You started to laugh.  You started to laugh so hard that you practically vibrated, you clapped your hand over your mouth to try to stifle the sound but it was useless, your giggles escaped and Spike looked up at you quizzically, brows furrowed.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s just,” you gasped, “doctors aren’t supposed to kiss their patients.”

“You’re not even an official doctor,” he countered, and you giggled.

“Guess it’s okay then,” you said with a wide grin, and he blushed.

“Now you’re being the idiot,” he grumbled, eyes flicking away from you.

“Maybe,” you sighed, “but that’s fine.”  He only looked at you curiously, one lone strand of hair falling in front of his eyes.  “Come on, Spiegel,” you laughed, flicking it away, “we have to get up.”  You rose to a sitting position, and he reluctantly followed suit.  As you started to slide off the bed, his arm snaked around your waist, pulling you back.  You stifled a yelp of surprise, and shot him a look.  

He laughed, his eyes traveling up your form.  They stopped at your shoulder.  His grin abruptly faded, his laughter dying like a summer breeze.  Your shirt had slipped, exposing the pockmarked, scarred skin of your shoulder.  Disgust roiled within you at the sight, and it had been years.  You couldn’t imagine what he was thinking.

“You weren’t kidding,” he whispered, his fingers coming up to gently brush at the marks.

“Yeah, well,” you said, “they stuck things in me wherever they could cover it up.”

“What’s this?” he asked, his fingers ghosting over a large patch of scar tissue spread like a splash of paint over your shoulder blade.  “That doesn’t look surgical to me.”

You gulped.  Those were memories you didn’t like to think about, had blocked off, and yet they rose, unheeded, smelly men with sweaty, slippery hands, the press of cobblestones against your face, knives pressed to your skin –

“Remember how I said the boys on the streets never caught me?” you replied flatly.  

“Yeah?” he said slowly, his gaze sliding up to yours.  He already knew, you could see it, and yet he was waiting for your answer.

“I lied.”

* * *

At breakfast, Spike asked you to fight him.  

You didn’t pride yourself on being terribly articulate, but surely enough to come up with a comeback to something like that.  You had always felt a little flutter of pride whenever you managed to one-up Spiegel in your frequent spats, and you assumed that today would be no different.

The only thing that escaped out of your mouth, however, was, “Huh?”

“Fight me,” he repeated as his cereal spoon slowly dipped back into its bowl, his eyes glinting strangely.  

You slowly looked him up and down, as if your naked eyes could perform the MRI that an actual doctor would have ordered by now.  

“You’re not in peak condition,” you said curtly.  “I’ll hurt you.”

That only seemed to egg him on, as an excited grin curled across his lips.  “I’d like to see you try.”

“Mhm,” you grunted skeptically, narrowing your eyes at him.  “If I bust an organ you’re going to die.”

“You won’t, so what’s there to worry about?” he retorted, slowly rising from his chair.

“Alright, Spiegel,” you sighed, your chair screeching against the steel plate on the floor as you stood.  “As long as you get off my ass for more than two seconds, I’ll be more than happy to knock yours to the ground.”

* * *

It was going to be a spectacle, apparently.  Jet and Faye both followed you into the observatory, food clutched in their hands, and shuffled off into a corner to watch expectantly.  You and Spike stood three feet from each other, each poised to spring, hands dangling loosely at your sides.  You watched as his muscles rolled and flexed, as his fingertips twitched and he rolled his weight across the balls of his feet. Oh, you could not wait to destroy his fragile masculinity.

And to do so, naturally, you couldn’t let him strike first.

You lunged, a soft fist swinging almost goodnaturedly towards his skull.  He leaned sideways, avoiding it with practiced ease, and followed with an impressive right uppercut, which you torqued to avoid, shifting your balance to one foot as you lashed out with the other one for a stinging ankle kick.  He jumped aside, feet skittering on the floor, and you went in again, crouching low and swinging your leg to sweep his out from under him.

But of course, he was expecting it.  He hopped above your leg, hands grabbing for your shoulders to pin you.  You flattened your chest to your thighs as he sailed at you, and you felt fingertips graze your tunic.  You righted yourself in a quick spin, swinging your leg back under you, as he somersaulted to break his fall and whipped to face you again.

You leapt up, heart pounding, veins singing with the delicious spark of adrenaline.  The two of you started exchanging blows, punches and blocks that refused to land for both sides.  You pushed forward, jabbing your fingers towards his shoulder as if to stab him, and he flinched. You were pushing him back now, your feet matching his step for step as he desperately tried to regain the offensive, his blocks swinging longer, his punches growing tired.  His eyebrows furrowed, his teeth clenching as he careened toward you in a burst of speed.

You were going easy on him, and he knew it.  

His hands were clawing towards your shoulders, hoping to grab you and wrench you around in order to offset your balance.  It was a desperate, stupid move, something done more out of anger than common sense.

You leaned to avoid his desperate grab.  And kept going.

Your skull was rushing to an urgent appointment with the ground, and Spike balked, grabbing for you in panic; you heard Faye yell something, but honestly the blood was pounding so heavily in your eardrums that you barely noticed.  

And then you were swinging, palms grating on the steel bolts as you transferred most of your weight to your hands, swinging your legs around and out from under you, your heel connecting with his ankle.

It’s actually quite easy to knock a man down, you reflected as he landed with a thud.  Hilariously easy, in fact.  

You slowly rose to your feet, striding over to him, arms crossed resolutely in front of you.  His eyes flicked to you as you leaned over him, his face bright red with embarrassment.

“Are you at least gonna help me up?!” he barked as he rose to a sitting position, rubbing the back of his head irritably.

“No,” you replied simply, straightening yourself.  “Because you’re going to pull me down with you.”

He didn’t deny it, you noticed.

Rolling his eyes, he rose to his feet, dusting himself off nonchalantly.  

“You didn’t hurt me,” he grumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.  

“Sure, kid,” you teased, reaching up to ruffle his hair.  You avoided his swatting hand with a snort, adding, “Well, there isn’t much you can do, Spiegel, but at least you punch good.”

“Please,” he scoffed, “there’s plenty –”

Your back was already to him, your footsteps decisive, as you waved a hand lazily and mumbled in reply, “Mhm.”

After you were out of sight, you rolled your shoulder experimentally, wincing as a shock of pain thrummed through it.

And he had only clipped you.

* * *

After deliberately avoiding you for the remainder of the day, he cornered you that night in his room as you were settling down to sleep.  You had originally planned to sleep in the observatory, to maybe give him some time to think, but dammit, his bed was much softer than yours would ever be.

You were just shuffling into a pair of long, baggy pajama pants when the door slid open and there he was, hands buried in the pockets of his sweatpants, eyes burning with something you couldn’t identify.

You were about to say something, a question, an inquiry as to whether you had, indeed, injured him, but he was sweeping towards you, pressing your lips feverishly to his as his hands gripped your face, his sheer body weight making you stumble back towards the bed.

Oh.

The backs of your knees hit the edge of the mattress and you were falling, his arm snaking around your waist to soften the drop.  And suddenly he was on top of you, his hands creeping up your shirt as he broke the kiss and stared into your eyes intently.

“I figured,” he whispered, descending to kiss the living daylights out of you before rising again, “that this is the only thing I can beat you at.”

Well.  You weren’t going to argue with that, seeing as you were a quivering, heaving mess under his touch.

“Whatever, Spiegel,” you scoffed, rolling your eyes as your hands went up to curl in his hair.  “Just kiss me, you idiot.”

And he complied.  Oh, did he comply.  He gently pried your lips open with his own, and slithered his tongue into your mouth.  And it was weird, and you squirmed, but he merely smirked against your mouth and slowly guided you into it, until you were responding with just as much fervor.

Your hands ghosted over his abs, your fingernails gently scratching against his skin – oh god was this right? oh god – but his moan reverberated against your lips and a fire began to burn within you.  You began to press more insistently, trailing your fingers over his muscles and reaching behind him to gently score at the planes of his back.  He broke the kiss with a gasp, staring at you accusingly as his chest heaved above you.  

Feeling suddenly brazen, you hoisted yourself up on your elbows, pressing a quick, innocent kiss to his lips as you drew your shirt up over your head.  A choking noise gurgled in his throat as you were suddenly exposed, his eyes involuntarily raking over you as his face grew redder by the second.  You were covered in scars, pockmarks, and faded pink rings from where tubes had been stuck into you.  But his eyes flicked to your shoulder, and you were confused for a second until you remembered, that goddamn bruise –

“Where’d you get this?” he asked, eyebrows furrowing in confusion as he inspected it.

“Didn’t I tell you?  You punch good,” you responded, eyes trained resolutely on the wall to your right.  

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, running his thumb over it lightly.

“Don’t be.  I agreed to fight you.”

“I asked.”

“Jesus,” you sighed, running a hand through his hair.  “People get hurt when they fight.  It happens.”

Still looking unhappy, he pressed a soft kiss to the bruise, and you rolled your eyes as butterflies fluttered in your stomach.  

He moved up to your jawline, peppering small kisses along it, stopping to suck lightly just below your ear.  You exhaled shakily as he started kissing and sucking at your neck, his hands skittering over your abdomen, his fingertips brushing just below the curves of your breasts.  Huffing in dissatisfaction, your hands clamped over his, tugging them up to press against your breasts.  You sighed involuntarily, arching into the touch as your hands snaked up to rake at his back.  

“You move fast,” he chuckled, pressing a quick kiss to your collarbone.  He squeezed experimentally, and a small moan escaped your lips as pleasure thrummed in your veins.  He pressed his mouth to the dip in your collarbone, kissing his way to the valley between your breasts, leaving tingles wherever his lips brushed.  But fast as you may have moved, it wasn’t fast enough.

Noticing the strategic position of his hips above yours, you arched your back, grinding up into him.  He grunted, abruptly halting his attention to your skin, and lifting his gaze to your face, his brows furrowed.  You undulated against him once more, and he attacked your lips, pressing you down into the mattress.  You hummed happily as he ground into your hips in response, your hands traveling down his back to tease at the waistband of his sweatpants.

He broke away from you to stare into your eyes, his breathing ragged.  “You sure?” he panted, brushing a lock of hair out of your eyes.

“If you stop now, I’ll kill you,” you warned, and he chuckled, his hands settling at your hips, his fingers dipping below your own waistband.  “Christ, just take them off,” you groaned, pushing his sweatpants down his hips and helping him get them off with your feet.  

Pressing a heated kiss to your lips, he pulled yours down in return, and you kicked them off with a happy giggle.  

You were both bare before each other now, and god this was moving so fast, you had kissed him for the first time just this morning, but there was a heightened level of urgency within you, some inner clairvoyance telling you that you better get this done now, right now.  

And, well.  You had seen a penis before, sure.  But seeing one during an examination and seeing one that was about to be inside you were two very different things.  

“Something wrong?” he laughed, staring at you curiously.

“Nothing at all,” you responded, and the truth of it resounding through your bones almost hurt.  You wanted him, you wanted him bad.  

“Good,” he breathed, peppering kisses over your abdomen as he slithered down your body.  You didn’t pay much attention to what he was doing until you felt hot breath curl over – there – and you jerked, a half-gasp, half-sigh escaping your lips.

“W-What are you doing?” you stuttered, your hands curling in the bedsheets, and the only answer he gave was his tongue flicking out to – oh god oh god oh god how is he so good with his mouth?

And then it was just Spike, everything Spike, his hands gripping your hips, his nose brushing against you, his tongue licking and insistent, his lips sucking, kissing, worrying gently, his hot breath curling over you, and then it was over, pleasure was bursting behind your eyes in a cacophony of colors and the last shred of common sense you possessed was just barely able to get you to bite your lip to hold back a yell.

You melted into a boneless heap, your chest rising up and down rapidly as you struggled for breath, and you heard him chuckle as he started to move back up, his wandering hands and stray kisses sending tingles down your spine.

“There,” he breathed into the crook of your neck, and you whimpered pitifully, the huskiness of his voice doing things to you that you never thought it could, “now we’re even.”  

“How do you figure?” you managed, your breath still coming in labored gasps.

“You saved my life, I owed you a debt, and I just paid it.  Simple,” he mumbled, pressing a soft kiss to your collarbone and sweet Christ you wanted him, you wanted him now.

“Mmm.  Less talking, more . . .,” you trailed off, bumping your hips up into his.

He laughed, rising up to look down into your face.  His hair was mussed, eyes shining, a lazy grin curling over his mouth.  “As you wish,” he said with a grin, and moved to position himself in front of your entrance.

“Just don’t go too fast, wouldn’t want you to burst anything,” you quipped, and he groaned.

Your laugh was cut off by . . . well.  

It was weird, to say the least.  Your memories of the day you had gotten your scar were hazy at best, mostly from repeated efforts to repress them into the deepest darkest corner of your brain you could find, but from the memories you could recall that didn’t cause overwhelming disgust, it had felt nothing like this.  

But almost immediately after the weirdness came the pleasure, and you arched your back and tilted your head back and sighed, rolling your hips experimentally, and a moan resounded from somewhere above you.

And, well, let’s just say what you had been feeling was nothing compared to when he moved.

It was like everything you had been unknowingly craving for the past few months – god, had it been months already? – compiled into one single feeling.  Shock waves of pleasure reverberated through you as Spike’s mouth crashed to yours, your moans and his reverberating around each other as he pounded into you again and again, his hands coming up to massage at your breasts as his lips moved from your mouth to your neck, sucking so hard that you knew for a fact you would have marks to cover up tomorrow.  The waves of pleasure were coming faster now, and your arms circled around him, your nails scoring his back and he groaned, his pace becoming more desperate, insistent, and all common sense abandoned you in that moment as you moaned desperately.  

Everything was building, building, building, and this was nothing like you had ever felt or known you could feel, and Spike’s pace was becoming erratic, his hands were gripping you harder, his mouth growing more insistent, and suddenly you were shaking, crying out, arching off of the bed as your nails dug into Spike’s back and spots of color burst in front of your tightly shut eyelids.  He quivered inside of you, and he was collapsing on top of you, pressing you into the mattress, and it was over.

You both lay there breathless, marveling silently at the wonderful, long-awaited event that had just transpired.  He slid out of you, and you sighed at the feeling of emptiness that followed.  You half expected him to get up, throw on his clothes, walk away, and leave you there; hell, you wouldn’t have been surprised at all if he did.  But he just sprawled on his back and pulled you to his side, and suddenly there were blankets being thrown over you and an arm tucking itself around you and you wanted to cry.

“That sure was fun, huh, Doc,” you heard him comment, and you could only laugh softly.  

“Mhm,” you responded, curling into his side happily.  “We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

“Definitely,” he chuckled, shifting onto his side and pressing a kiss to the top of your head.  

“Fuckin’ dork,” you grumbled, and his laughter vibrated to your very bones.

“Love you too,” he yawned, and you swore everything stopped.

Ah.  

So that’s what it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have found that i am an expert in writing exceedingly depressing/smutty things. will keep you posted on where i can apply this talent


	7. See You Space Samurai...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise surprise bet you thought you'd never see this update ever again  
> tbh i'm kinda surprised too but while i was on a school trip in ireland the spike feelings seized me and haven't left since

Father was coughing again.  It was a horrible, heaving cough, and you were half convinced he was going to bring up one of his lungs.  Mother trotted to his side, the attacks so frequent now that they were no longer any cause for alarm, and rubbed his back slowly.  Her lips were tight.  

The hand he had held to his mouth came away bloody, and, still silent, Mother rose and made her way back to the sink, where dishes sat waiting in the soapy water.  Father wiped his mouth and hand with a pink handkerchief.  It had been white once.  The stains did not come out easily, your sore arms could attest to that.

At the sink, Mother coughed, once, twice, three times, her hands clutching the metal basin, her head bowed low.  

Everyone was coughing, you reflected curiously, everyone but you.  Father, Mother, Jelena down the street, Petra two blocks over, Grandfather Morry, Elder Teodor, and just about everyone else.  All you heard, all day long, was the sound of deep, hacking coughs, all you saw from your five year old height of 3 feet 4 inches was clenched fists holding bags with large red pluses on them, bloody handkerchiefs sticking out of pants pockets, pockmarks from where vaccines had been injected and injected again.  

It was a bad world, but it was yours.  Jelena and Petra were nice enough, Nino and Shaun not so much, Grandfather Morry and Grandmother Dijana always gave you sweets, and Elder Teodor was just old.  Elder-Wife Frida had died last month, along with Wengi, Marcela, Jeff, and countless others.

You had been attending many funerals lately, and your black dress was starting to wear out.

The soft hum of the kitchen fan buzzed through your skin as you idly toyed with the dolls clutched in your hands, too tired to even give them voices.  You were always tired nowadays, but you were afraid to say anything, for fear of worrying Mother.  

It was the heat, they all reasoned, the heat that was doing this, the heat that plagued the colony of Elsin all year long.  Every day was open-window day, the lemonade stands and popsicle stands never shut down (although they had been of late, with more than one blood-spattered wooden stand found abandoned by the roadside), lines of heat were always roiling off of the pavement, and there was not a long-sleeved shirt to be found in your entire house.

Not much of a house, in truth.  A one-room, long thing, with eating area and kitchen in the front and sleeping space in the back, divided by a faded brown curtain.  The tin roof rattled when it was windy and the wood walls were full of holes, which didn’t really matter because there was never any rain (water was pumped in from other colonies).

“Ma,” you warbled in your small five-year-old’s voice, “can I go out and play?”

Mother only nodded, her head still bowed between her shoulders, knuckles turning white on the metal sink basin.  You rushed out the door, leaving the smell of sickness and blood behind, and took a big gulp of the fresh Elsin air, but even that wasn’t really fresh, it was brought in from somewhere else, just like the people, the houses, the buildings, even the ground beneath your feet.

You started off leisurely down your street, bare feet scuffing in the dirt, humming a few notes to yourself.  You found Jelena sitting in her synthetic-grass yard, a dinky cardboard dollhouse set out before her, murmuring to herself as she moved around dolls made of faded brown cloth torn from a potato sack.  There was red-spotted handkerchief poking out of her skirt pocket.

“Petra can’t come today,” Jelena said as you approached, without even looking up.  “Her cough’s gotten too bad.”

“Oh,” was all you said as you plopped down next to her, the synthetic grass pricking your bare thighs.  “Pa’s cough is bad, too.”

“Aren’t you sick yet?” Jelena asked, peering up at you, deep brown eyes set in a deep brown face framed by deep brown, curly hair. Her pink-with-white-polka-dots dress was dirty and worn with persistent red spots dotting the collar and hem, her black mary janes chipped and cracking.  Jelena’s house had been nice, once, with its slate tile roof and painted walls, but even that now looked sick and tired.

You shook your head, cheeks reddening.  It had almost become a source of shame, the fact that you weren’t infected, that you were allowed to go about your daily life normally, that your clothes were notoriously blood-free.

“Lucky,” she mumbled, bowing her head in the same way Mother had, her hands tightening the same way around her dolls, and for some reason you couldn’t take it anymore, and with all the spontaneity of a five year old child, leapt up and ran for home.

Pebbles stabbed into the soles of your feet but you didn’t care, even the smell of death that leeched into the very walls of your home was better than the looks people gave you.

But someone had beat you there.

Two tall men, in long, clean white coats that reflected the sun painfully into your eyes, were standing in your doorway, their hair slicked back over their heads, the stems of glasses peeking out above their ears.  One was holding a briefcase.

“Where is the girl?” the one on the left asked, his voice so clipped and stiff that it needled at your ears.

“She went out,” Mother responded, and between the two men you could see her wringing a dishtowel in her hands.

“Where?” the man on the right, the one with the briefcase pressed, but before she could answer you called out to her, “Ma!”

All three turned to look at you, and in the heavy silence that followed you could hear the faint sounds of Father coughing up more blood.

“Hello,” the man on the left said in a poisoned-honey voice, faking a smile, but it looked more like the baring of weirdly straight, white fangs, and you backed up a step.  

“Sweetling,” Mother said softly, wringing the towel in her hands.  “These . . . nice men are going to take you away for a bit. They’re doctors.”

“Am I sick?” you asked, your heart skipping a beat.

“No, sweetling,” she asked, and there were tears dotting her cheeks, and Father was there, hand on her shoulder, dried blood at the corner of his mouth, and he looked tired, so tired, and he was crying, too, and the man with the briefcase grabbed you rather roughly by the back of the collar (when had he gotten behind you?) and the man on the left was still baring his teeth, and you wanted to fight but were frozen in place by Mother’s gasping words, “No, sweetling,” she repeated, her chest heaving with ill-concealed sobs, “it’s because you’re not.”

It was all chaos after that, your heels dragging in the dirt as you struggled, Right’s grip tight on your shirt collar, Left still trying to be cheerful, telling you all about the nice place you were going to.  You were tossed into the back of a van, and you pounded on the back doors, straining on your tiptoes to see out the slim back windows.

The last thing you remember is seeing your house growing smaller in the distance, and Father fainting in Mother’s arms.

* * *

You bolted upright out of bed, your skin sticky with sweat, and you heard Spike splutter from next to you, decades-old instincts roughly being kicked into overdrive, and he was up, too, blankets pooling around his waist, as you buried your face in your hands and started to cry.

You felt him grind to a halt, the emotional whiplash leaving him stuttering, hands fluttering, unsure, his mind cycling through the memories, the years, what exactly _did_ you do when the woman who had kicked your ass effortlessly mere hours before woke up crying?

A dilemma, to be sure, because you hadn’t cried in years, not since that day crouched in front of Sam’s body, and the feeling was unfamiliar, the tears burning your eyelids and you scrubbed at them furiously, because it _burned_ , it burned and you weren’t accustomed to that singular type of pain, and the futility of your scrubbing only made the sobs rack harder from your chest.

But how _couldn’t_ you cry, the memories had just come rushing back so suddenly, memories of a life you had started to no longer associate with yourself, and it had _hurt_ , suddenly recovering parts of yourself that you had lost for so long.  And it was wonderful, to remember the warmth of your mother’s arms, the easiness of your father’s smiles, the bounce of your best friend’s curls, the sun beating down on your shoulders and the hot air scorching your tongue, without thinking of what came after.

And it didn’t hurt as much anymore, thinking about it, because now you had this, a before, a starting point, a world that had not begun in the stark white walls and antiseptic air of a hospital room.  

And that was enough.

“Wh-What’s –,” Spike finally managed, and as you emerged from the safety of your hands (you were sure you were a sight, tousled hair, blotchy face, red eyes) you saw, just for a second, who he had been, before you, before Julia, before whatever it was, the cold sheen you hadn’t known was there had detracted, for half a second, nothing more, and you saw a man who was very familiar with waking up gasping in the middle of the night.

“I remembered,” you choked out, a wobbly smile tottering across your lips.  “I remembered it, I remembered it all, where I lived, my friends, my mom and dad –” that stopped you, for a second, but you fought past the lump in your throat, “god, my mom and dad, how did I ever forget what they looked like, how did I ever _forget_ –”

You were expecting, hoping for a witty quirk, some sort of sly remark about the remedial properties of a night in the sack with Spike Spiegel, but there was nothing, just a mouth opening and closing like a fish, tousled brown hair, two eyes of two very different colors rounded out like dinner plates in the purest expression of shock you had ever seen.  

“What, nothing?” you finally supplied, scrubbing at one eye with your wrist.  “No remark?  No jab?  No ‘modern medicine ain’t got nothin’ on Spike Spiegel?’  Honestly?”  

“Y-You’re,” he stuttered, and his hands had finally come to a rest in his lap, flopped over the covers like gutted fish.  “You’re not – you – you don’t – I –”

“What?” you poked, that familiar (it had become almost comforting at this point) prickle of annoyance in your chest forcing you onwards.  “Never seen a woman cry before?”

“Not – not _you_ ,” he managed, his first coherent sentence in five minutes of consciousness, and you cocked your head.  “You don’t – you’re – you’re just –?”

Now that, _that_ pissed you off.

“I have been kidnapped, experimented on, beaten, assaulted, and nearly burnt to death, and you honestly think I came out of all that without a single tear dripping from my eyes?  Christ on a stick, Spiegel, how dumb _are_ you?”

He scowled at that, and it was comforting, as he spat back, “I’ve seen _plenty_ of women cry, but – I don’t know, it’s just like you’re not – real –?”

You scoffed.  “You are going to look over the fact that a few hours ago your penis was –”

“Fine, fine!” he spluttered, dragging his hands down his tomato-red face.  “I get it, you cried, you’re real, I just – wasn’t expecting it?  I don’t know, you just – seemed impervious to all forms of emotion that were detrimental to your psychological well-being.”

“I have never heard that many big words come out of your mouth.  I’m proud.”

“Will you quit it already!”

You laughed, shoving him affectionately, and he scoffed.  

“We should get up,” you sighed, moving to get up, but Spike grabbed your wrist.

“You just wake up crying after recovering repressed memories and you want to get up _now?_ ” he asked incredulously, but a smile was tugging at his mouth and you rolled your eyes, settling back into the covers.  He rolled over and tucked you into his chest, his arms wrapped securely around you, and the feeling of your bare chest pressing against his sent sparks down your spine.  You were still entirely naked, you reflected, your clothes were lying somewhere on the floor, and your thighs were unbearably sticky from, well, the result of exertions, but Spike was tucking your head underneath his chin and humming and it was so nice and not-Spike and you wondered what Jet and Faye would say if they saw him right now, and like that, you were asleep.

* * *

You woke long before Spike did, detangling yourself from his iron grip and stretching luxuriously towards the ceiling.  The hum of the Bebop’s engines skittered across the surface of your skin and you hummed in tune, slithering off of the bed towards the pile of hastily discarded clothes on the floor.

You skittered to the bathroom across the hall (strangely convenient, you must say), cleaned yourself up a bit, and returned to see Spike sprawled out on the mattress, snoring, and you stifled a laugh.  

You dressed slowly, and stepped out of his room into the dimly-lit hallway, listening.  Faint clinking and scuffling sounds were echoing from the living room, along with hummed strains of a song you didn’t know.

You tried your luck in that direction, feet moving almost soundlessly on the worn metal floor, and emerged into the living room to see Faye poised on the sofa, sifting through the pieces of her dismantled gun lying on the coffee table.

You tapped a heel on the metal to signal your approach, and her head snapped up, eyes taking you in warily as you circled around and sat in the armchair across from her, crossing your legs under you.

“Morning,” she ventured, screwdriver poised in her long, delicate fingers.

“Morning,” you returned, drawing your chair closer to the coffee table.  “Keeping busy?”

“Cleaning,” she responded, setting down the screwdriver and holding up the stripped-down gun for inspection.  “Have to do it every so often, or else you have to waste money on a new one.  Looks nice, too.”  She grinned.

“Could you teach me?” you asked, and she looked at you curiously.

“Why?”

“Figure I’ll have to use one at some point.”  You shrugged, and she chewed on the inside of her cheek.

“Fine then.”

She pieced the gun back together with swift, nimble fingers and you scooted even closer, resting your elbows on the coffee table.

She had the assembled gun front and center, along with a rag, a thin metal rod, and what looked to be a jar of engine oil.  

“First,” she began, all business-like, “take out the magazine.  Check for a round in the chamber.”  She pulled back the top part of her Glock and flipped it for you to see.  “Pull back on the slide a little bit.  The slide’s the top part.”  She tapped it with a fingernail and you nodded studiously.  “Pull down on this little lever, it’s called the slide lock.  Bring the slide forward, and there you have it.”  The slide fell off of the base of the gun and into Fey’s waiting hand, and she tossed it into the air a few times, shooting you a wry smile before placing it on the table.  “Then, take the spring out, and then the thing beneath it.  The barrel.  And there you have it.”  She spread her hands out, and you cocked your head.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Somehow I thought it’d be more –,” you wiggled your hands ineffectively, “– complicated.”

“It is,” she said simply, picking up the rag, wrapping it around the metal rod, and dipping it into the oil.  “There are tons of inner parts and workings, but I usually don’t clean those unless Spike decides to go full-on Rambo on me.”  

“Rambo?” You cocked your head further.

Something in her face twinged, and she sighed.  

“Old movie.  Old, old movie.

“Anyways – you shove an oiled-up rag up the barrel a few times until you think it’s clean, who knows, then you flip the rag over, oil it up again, and just scrub wherever you see fit.  The inside of the slide, the base, whatever, you’ll usually see the crusted up black gunk when it starts to get bad.  We’re too poor to afford the fancy tools to clean these properly.  Then, you wipe off the excess shit, put the barrel back in the slide, make sure it isn’t sticking out, put the spring on top of it, and then just, you know, slide the slide back on.”

And just like that, the gun was sitting prettily in front of you, black metal gleaming in the stark light of the overheads, and you blinked.

“Hm.”

“I mean, Spike’s gun’s a little different, but I think you’re doing a pretty good job of polishing that already.”

She winked, and you wanted to die.

“You –”

“Mhm.”

“How much did you –?”

“Eh.  Got boring after a while.”

“ _Bor_ –?!”

“Kidding, kidding, you kids have fun.  I’ll just be the seemingly-oblivious grandmother, watching from the sidelines with her little clickety old knitting needles as she judges your every move.”

“Geez, you’re not that old,” you snorted, settling back in the armchair and crossing your arms.

“77, give or take a year or two.”

Silence.

“You’re kidding.”

“Not a bit.”  She grinned again, but it was tighter.  “Got into a Space Shuttle accident in ol’ twenty-ott-fourteen, doctors didn’t have the technology to save me, cryogenically preserved me for 54 years until presto!  I emerge, hospital debts out the wazoo, the year is 2068, and I’ve forgotten who I am!  A fun way to wake up, lemme tell you.  Met a guy, seemed nice, told me he’d erase my debt, ended up faking his death and leaving me with even more, after wandering for a bit avoiding the collectors I joined up with this shady casino asshole, and then one day Spike and Jet come along, handcuff me, I escape, wander for a bit, join back up with these losers, and then one day figure I’ve had enough and clean out their safe!  That sure was a wild day.  After a bit more adventures, running around, then, well, here you are.”  

At the end of her story she blinked a few times, seemingly surprised at all that had come spilling out of her, but just sighed and settled back on the sofa, crossing her legs and arms simultaneously.  

“What a life,” you commented, for a lack of anything better to say, and she snorted.

“What a life, indeed.”

The two of you sat in silence for a few moments, the humming of the Bebop doing all the talking for you.  Eventually you ventured into the quiet.

“Is it hard?  Living here with them?”

She shrugged.  “Not too bad.  They’re not all that terrible, for men.  There was another kid who used to be here, Ed, but she was only 13.  Couldn’t really relate to her all that well.  Still, can’t help but miss the stupid brat.”

“What happened to her?”

“Met her dad back on Earth, left the ship with the dog to go live with him instead. Guess the destitute space nomad’s life isnt for everyone.”

“Dog?  What dog?”

“Some genetically engineered super-genius dog that Spike brought back from some mission or other.  Ask him about it, I don’t know the details.  But genius or not, that dog was a real pain in the ass sometimes.  Jet named him Ein, for Einstein.”  You blinked, and she rolled her eyes.  “Famous scientist.  Invented some shit, I don’t know.”

You chuckled.  “Quite the team you had there.”

“Yeah, well,” she rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly, “now we have an ex-test subject who can knock the best fighter I’ve ever seen on his ass in just under five minutes, who also happens to be a shady doctor-not-doctor who has somehow managed to save all of us despite being here for only a few months.”  She reddened, and dipped her head a bit.

“I’m glad I’m here, too,” you supplied, with an easy smile.  “It’s nice having another woman around for once.”  

Faye smiled, and for once, it looked genuine.

“Sure hope you two aren’t plotting to rob us blind again,” drawled a voice from the hallway, and Spike strode into the room, clad in his usual faded white tank top and faded white sweats, the muscles in his arms rolling wonderfully as he stretched, and you fidgeted, trying to keep your composure.  

“Try all you want, Spike, but emerging five minutes apart from each other won’t work on me,” Faye replied, that grin working its way onto her face, and Spike froze.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied coolly, striding into the kitchen and refusing to look at you.

“Don’t be coy with me!” Faye called after him.  “She’s told me everything!”

Something crashed to the floor.  

Faye winked at you, and it was in that moment that the two of you finally bonded.

For what better to connect over than the embarrassment of Spike Spiegel?

“ _Absolutely_ everything,” you contributed, trying to keep back your giggles.  “Every single little detail.  She knows all.”

There was absolute, utter silence, and your hands were clamped around your sides as you fought to keep your laughs down.  

Faye was looking absolutely delighted, her eyes sparkling with the sort of mischief you usually attributed to young children.  “Apparently, Spike, you –”

His head popped out of the kitchen doorway, and he looked absolutely furious, but the effect was somewhat ruined with how utterly red his face was.

“You _told_.”

“In my defense, she figured it out first,” you laughed, enjoying the way his flush deepened.

“I am going to kill you.”

“You’re welcome to try.”

“What’s all this commotion in here?”  Jet walked into the room, scratching at his carefully-trimmed beard, and looked from you to Faye to Spike and back.  Spike disappeared into the kitchen without another word, and you heard the faint clinking sounds of him picking up whatever it was he had broken.  “What’s with him?”

“Oh, nothing,” Faye replied nonchalantly, picking the gun up off the table and tucking it into the waistband of her shorts.

Jet just shrugged tiredly and dragged the small holographic TV that had been shunted to the edge of the coffee table over to the center.  “Whatever,” he grumbled, tapping the side to turn it on.  “We have a job.”  

The writing on the screen was backwards from your position in the armchair, so you circled to Jet’s side to get a better look.  It was a criminal record, the guy’s face large on the left-hand side of the screen, a dark-skinned man with a silver piercing in his bottom lip and half of his left eyebrow over-ridden by mottled scar tissue that extended from his hairline to just above his eye socket.  His hair was perfectly coiffed, and a gold medallion dangled from his right ear.

“Greaseball,” Faye concluded, wrinkling her nose, and you nodded in agreement.

“Hope he isn’t too greasy for us to catch,” Jet grumbled, enlarging the record so that the criminal’s face took up the whole screen.  “Pretty large bounty on this one.  2.5 million Woolongs.”

Spike poked his head out again, and ambled into the living room, peering around you at the bounty’s face.  

“Where’s he holed up?” Faye asked, examining her nails disinterestedly.  

Jet smiled.  With a few taps on the holographic keyboard, he pulled up an image of a space station shaped like a giant roulette wheel, slowly rotating in the back abyss of space, and Faye’s eyebrows almost disappeared into her hairline.

“You know I can’t go back there!” she snapped, glaring daggers at the side of Jet’s face.

“Exactly.  You’re not going.”

Immediately all eyes swiveled to you.  A few seconds ticked by as your brain went through the motions.

“No.”

“Awww, come on!” Faye piped up, all anger abruptly gone, her eyes shining like a child presented with a new toy.  “It’ll be fun!  Your first bounty hunt . . . .”

“Plus it’s a nice way to see if we can trust you or not,” Jet added, grinning.

“Doesn’t seem like too bad of an idea,” Spike’s voice came from behind you, and you could feel his smirk burning into the back of your neck.

“What will I wear?!” you insisted, gesturing to your current ensemble of baggy belted tunic and faded brown leggings.  

“I can give you something,” Faye replied, her eyes skimming up and down your body. “I’ve stolen dresses of all shapes and sizes.”

“You know, somehow, that makes me want to do this even _less_.”

“Ready for your great re-entry into the bounty hunting business?” Jet directed at Spike, completely overriding your protest, and anger frothed in your stomach.

“As long as I get clearance from the doc,” Spike answered, winking at you, and you wanted to leap over the couch and throttle that stupid neck of his.

Medically speaking, he was fine, you knew.  Mostly.  He was still up and walking after the, well, exertions of a few hours ago, and he didn’t seem to be in too much pain, so a few hours of running after some greaseball worth a measly two and a half million woolongs shouldn’t be all that bad.  

But still.  You didn’t want to go.  

“Come on, Doc,” Faye chirped, grabbing your arm before you could get another word out.  She looked positively demonic, her nails digging into the skin of your forearm as she hauled you bodily off of the couch and towards the back of the ship.  

“Hey!” you cried, struggling in her grip (you knew could knock her to the ground easily, with barely any effort at all, and you knew that she knew it, too, but for some reason, you didn’t), “isn’t anybody gonna help me?!”

All those two useless men did was wave absentmindedly after you.

* * *

“No, Faye, you don’t _understand_.”  Your voice was tinging on desperate now as you clutched a dark blue ensemble to your chest, your naked skin tingling in the cool blast of the Bebop’s environmentals.  Clothes lay strewn all around you on the floor of Faye’s cramped cabin, dresses of all shapes, sizes, and colors, most of them dangerously low cut and chokingly tight.  You had been stripped to your underclothes and stuffed and tied into every sort of piece of clothing you could imagine, but all Faye did was shake her head, rip the dress off of you, and start over again.

“Don’t care,” she said curtly, drawing a long red dress with a deep v-neck and a slit up one side out of her closet and appraising it critically.  

“No, _Faye_ –”

“Try this on,” she plowed over you, throwing the red dress into your face and you barely managed to catch it as the blue one slithered out of your grasp.

“ _Faye_!” you cried, your voice cracking, and you could feel tears bubbling in the back of your throat and dear god not _twice in one goddamn day_ –

She finally paused, looking at you with incredulity carved into the angle of her eyebrows, and you grit your teeth together.

“I can’t wear _any of these things!”_ you went on, throwing the red dress to the floor and baring your (almost) naked body for her to see.  “Don’t you _get it?!”_  There was no stopping it now, your chest felt like it was going to cave in on itself, hatred churning in your stomach as you looked over your pockmarked, scarred, and beaten body.  “I can’t wear _any of it!_  Just look at me!  I’m . . .”

You couldn’t continue, your throat was closing up too much, and suddenly you could remember every single origin of every single scar, every single poke of the needles, every unanesthetized incision, every tube stuck into your arms and legs and back and neck, and you felt so sick that the room started to spin.  You thrust out a steadying hand towards the wall and ended up half-collapsing onto Faye’s bed, curled up on the edge with your head in your hands, self-hatred burning through your core so intensely that you wanted to scream.

You felt the bed sink as Faye sat silently next to you, and you peered over at her.  She was shrugging the physics-defying jacket off of her shoulders, exposing forearms covered in tiny little scrapes and cuts; she rolled down her pantyhose to expose mottled scar tissue of every size and shape; and finally, she drew her hair away from her neck and turned so you could look at the huge purple birthmark splotched from the nape of her neck to just below her ear.

“I mean, granted,” she finally said, putting all of her clothing back where it belonged, “I don’t have as many as you.”  She gently tugged at your wrists, and looked straight into your eyes.  “But that doesn’t mean you should be any more ashamed of yours than I am.”

You sniffled pitifully, and gave her a small smile.  

“Guess I’ll try on that dress now.”

* * *

You sauntered back into the living room, hair done, makeup set (your eyes were still stinging from that goddamn mascara Faye had forced on you), that low-cut red dress tight around your waist, and you were uncomfortably aware of just how high that slit up the side went when you saw Spike adjusting his tie near the loading dock, dressed in a dark blue suit and yellow undershirt with a popped collar so high that it almost brushed his ears, a loose black tie hanging from his neck.  It was almost the exact same outfit he had been wearing when you found him lying half-dead in front of the Red Dragon Syndicate.

That didn’t make you salivate any less, though.  

He looked up at the sound of your high heels clinking on the metal floor (you and Faye had fought for a solid fifteen minutes over the height of the heel, and had finally reached a compromise at three inches) and his eyes went round as dinner plates.

“Seems we’re both looking pretty good, Spiegel,” you quipped, cocking your hip and raking your eyes up and down his body.  

“Seems so,” he responded smoothly, striding toward you, all broad shoulders and stiff blue fabric, his musky cologne heavy in your nostrils.  “I really should thank Faye.”

“Yeah, well,” you murmured, toying with the edge of the slit down the side.  “‘Spose I have to get used to these scars some day.”

And without warning, he kissed your forehead.  

You blushed fiercely, and grumbled, “You goddamn sap.”

He only grinned.  

Jet and Faye emerged at that moment, Jet dressed in a grey suit complete with black bowler hat, Faye leaning against the hallway door frame to watch with a wry smirk on her face as the Bebop descended towards the casino’s docks.  

“You be careful out there,” she called, and Spike rolled his eyes.  You were sure you could have said something witty in return, but your brain was already occupied with tying your stomach into knots.  

“Will do,” Jet grumbled, waving a hand at her as the Bebop shuddered to a halt, the loading bay sliding down to reveal a brightly colored hangar filled with people milling about, dressed in things that made you wonder why you ever thought the dress you were wearing was avant-garde.  Too many years spent in the ass-end of society, you supposed.

“Ready to put some food on the table?” Spike drawled, idly toying with his tie.

“We both know how this is gonna end,” Jet sighed, but you didn’t have any time to ponder over this statement before Spike was dragging you out into the crowd.

And you had spent a good couple of years in a very crowded section of Mars, but it had been nothing like this.  

In the slums, people didn’t talk, attempting to limit their interactions with others as much as possible.  There was almost nothing, no chatter, just hushed conversations in dark corners, gossip muttered in an ear while walking by.  Information was shared through meaningful glances, seemingly-benign hand gestures, quirks of the eyebrows and twitches of the lips.

Not so here.  The conversations were loud and invasive, often butting up and intersecting with one another, with neither party remembering when the interaction had started or how it had gotten there.  No one here seemed to remember how to whisper, or even what it was; every single voice rang loud and clear through the hangar, to mingle into a cacophony of noise and language that assaulted your eardrums brutally after months spent in the almost constant silence of the Bebop.  

“Come on, Doc!” Spike called, dragging you further into the crowd, but his voice was only one of many, sounding as tinny as a metal toy’s whine.  

You were roughly smashed and shimmied between the throng of bodies, the scalpel strapped to your thigh bouncing uncomfortably in the scabbard Faye had given you.  She had presented you with a variety of options before setting out, with a mischievous grin and heavy eyes, assorted daggers of all shapes and sizes, that could be concealed in a shoe, against a thigh, down a bra; anywhere knives could be hidden, Faye had an answer.  You hadn’t even bothered to ask where she had collected all these things, just tucked a smaller scabbard against your thigh, same side as the slit in the dress (for easy access, of course, but it did mean watching how you moved).  You were just desperately hoping some guy didn’t fumble for your ass and grab a knife instead.  Might raise some awkward questions.  

Spike’s grip on your hand was becoming more strained as more people shuffled their way between you, and squaring your shoulders, you muscled your way through, ignoring the angry yells and surprised shouts, until you were back at his side, facing the entrance to the casino, with its brightly colored lights, twitchy guards, and, naturally, a metal detector.

Panic settled in your gut like bad takeout.

“Spike,” you murmured, tugging on his sleeve, but as you tried to pull him aside the crowd just pushed you farther forward.

He leaned closer to you, wisps of his hair brushing your face, and, trying to be discreet, you muttered, “I have a knife.”

“You saw my wife?”

“I have a knife,” you growled, bringing your lips so close to his ear that they brushed the heated skin, and you felt a barely-repressed shiver make its way through his shoulders.

“Kinky,” he replied, waggling his eyebrows, and you could have strangled him.  

“Do you not see the metal detectors?!” you snarled, your grip curling around his sleeve like a vice, but he only laughed.  

“I forget how new to this you are.”

“ _You_ –”

But he was whipping you through the crowd, torquing around the endless sweaty, heaving bodies at incredibly high speeds, and you hurriedly matched his pace, weaving between the rolling crowd towards a metal detector with an out-of-order sign dangling on it.  The two of you vaulted over the wire closing it off, and you briefly considered the fact that you had no idea where Jet was, but Spike was already shooting you the grin that made you weak in the knees, and you were laughing as his hand stayed steadfast in yours, guiding you through the main hall of the casino towards a shady alcove next to an ATM.  

“See?  Easy,” he said nonchalantly, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms.

“Ha ha.  Spike Spiegel, the comedian.  Now tell me, wise guy, where do we start looking?”

He shrugged.  “I don’t know.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Well,” he sighed, draping an arm heavily across your shoulders, “guess we’ll just have to start looking.”

* * *

The stares were easy to ignore, at first.  All you had to do was look away and pretend that they didn’t exist, that you didn’t see them, that you didn’t feel the stares raking down your arms, legs, chest, over every single pockmark and incision scar.

“Spike,” you murmured, rubbing your hand over one arm anxiously.  “Can you give me your jacket or something?”

“Why?”  He looked at you curiously.  “You cold or something?”

“No,” you replied, that goddamn instant honesty coming into play, “it’s just . . . people are staring.”

“So?”

“Well, Spiegel, you don’t look like you just went through a woodchipper.”

“Some people are attracted to scars.”  He winked.  

“Please,” you groaned, rolling your eyes, but a warm arm draped itself around your hips and a warm pair of lips came to nuzzle at the crook of your neck.

“I’m sure if they outright said something to you you’d kill them, anyways.”

Your lips quirked despite themselves.  

“Damn right.”

* * *

“Do you wanna hear another one?”

“No, Spiegel.”

“Okay, alright, ‘if I was a cat –”

“Spike, I swear to god.”

“If I was a cat, right, I’d spend all nine lives with _you_.’ Eeehhh?  Pretty good, right?”

“No, Spike.”

“Oh, please, it was great, got it from that guy right over there.”  He gestured with a finger to where a very drunk man with a loose toupee was attempting to seduce three women who obviously wanted nothing to do with him.

“You know, Spiegel, if you spent half as much time _actually bounty hunting_ as you do  eavesdropping we would have this guy by now.”

“You can’t rush these things, Doc,” he replied, taking a lazy swig from the champagne flute in his hand.  “You just have to let them –,” he made a hand gesture vaguely resembling ocean waves, “– _flow_.”

You squinted at the champagne glass in his hand.

“How many of those have you had?”  He shrugged.  “Are you _always_ this incompetent?”  Another shrug.  

As you were about to fire off an enraged retort, Spike held up his hand, his expression turned drastically serious, and if his ears could have perked like a German Shepherd’s they would have.  His lips slowly curled into a smile, and he caught your eye.

“Got him.”

You swiftly followed his gaze across the room to where a man was leaning up against a bar, speaking to the bartender, gold earring flashing as he bobbed his head, the piercing in his lip stretching as he smiled.  

“Nice catch, Spiegel,” you murmured as the two of you moved into position, flitting silently across the room towards the target.  

“It’s what I do,” he said with a wink, and you rolled your eyes.  

And then, as if summoned, Jet was there, too, hands cocked loosely in his pockets, but you knew they were curling around his Walther P99.  

Which reminded you, what was the plan, exactly? You glanced at Spike and Jet, but they seemed to have forgotten all about you, still weaving their way through the crowd towards the man at the bar.  As if sensing their approach, he detached himself from the polished wood, and set off towards a flight of stairs leading up to a balcony overlooking the casino floor.  Spike and Jet kept up pursuit, with you lagging behind, hand brushing the slight lump in your dress where your scalpel was concealed.

But as Spike was passing the bar, hands fluttering at his waistband, the bartender muttered, and in a crowded room you shouldn’t have heard it, but still it rang clear as day in your ears, “Swimming Bird.”

You had heard that name.  You _knew_ that name.  Everyone on Mars knew of Swimming Bird, the legendary warrior who had run with Venomous Snake and the Red Dragon Syndicate, mentored by the legendary Mao Yenrai, and who had gone down in a blaze of glory against the Gold Phoenixes.  He had become somewhat of a god to the people of the Martian slums, a role model of humble origins who had risen up through society and made a name for himself.  A party wasn’t a party without the tale of Swimming Bird being told at least twice.  

But he had died, years ago, in a last-ditch attempt to wipe out the Gold Phoenixes.

Oh.

_Oh_.

Spike froze up, turning slowly to the bartender, his eyes wide.  

You stayed well behind him, but still close enough to eavesdrop, poised amidst the crowd of people, swaying as they swayed and moving as they moved, still keeping one ear trained on the conversation.  

“‘Fraid you’ve got the wrong guy,” Spike said gruffly, his hands curling on the edge of the bar.

“I know a swimming bird when I see one,” the bartender replied with a smile, picking up a glass and beginning to polish it.  “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“I _am_ ,” Spike growled.  “And if you keep your mouth shut, only one of us has to leave here that way.”

The bartender sighed.  “Reckless, as ever, I see.”  You were trying to edge around Spike to get a good look at the guy’s face, but he and Spike both kept shifting from side to side, making it virtually impossible for you to get a good look without being noticed.  “But enough of that.  You made a new friend.”

Spike’s shoulders bristled, and his knuckles turned white on the lacquered wood.  

“Touch her and I swear to god I will kill every last one of you.”

“Oh, my good man,” the bartender laughed, and his accent was foreign, but familiar at the same time, and something was nagging at the base of your skull, something from long ago –  “We already have.”

Then, of all things, the bartender edged around Spike, and looked straight at you.

And you _recognized_ him.

“The Singing Samurai,” he intoned, lips stretching into a smile.  

“Spitting Dog,” the mantra leapt to your mind, unbidden, and you strode to the bar, heels clicking.  “You know what my answer is.”

“Doc, you _know_ him?!” Spike spat, and he looked more furious than you had ever seen him, and you didn’t exactly want to know how much of that anger was directed at you.

“What, you thought the hospital they kept me at was any old establishment?  Spitting Dog here was one of the many charming men who came to fight over my antibodies.”  

“Don’t sing so much anymore, do you?” Spitting Dog asked, leaning forward ever so slightly, but it made bile rise up in your throat.  “Suppose you’re more of a Space Samurai now.”

“Voice kicked the bucket a few years ago,” you said quietly, and all the pieces were starting to click together in your head, “getting caught in a building fire will do that to you.”

“Oh, yes.” And he was smiling evilly, the glass had been abandoned, and his golden eyes were glinting, pasty white skin stretching as he smiled, thin black hair plastered to his sweaty forehead.  “I hear smoke will do that to a good pair of lungs.”

Spitting Dog was leaning forward, and so were you, and your scalpel was pressing at his heart.

“What do you want?!” Spike snapped, slamming his hands on the bar so loudly that a few people turned to look.  “Why have you come after me?”

Spitting Dog looked at him, and laughed.

“Foolish, foolish boy.  You took care of Vicious, the start of all of our problems.  We’re not here for you.  We’re here for her.”  His eyes slid to yours, and you shivered.  “You see, you may not realize it, but you have more than just a cure to some virus living in those cells of yours.  Why do you think we kept you for so long?

“And now, the Space Samurai has taken up with a space cowboy.  How fitting.  What a perfect little love story.  Kinda reminds me of one a few years back . . . there once was a tiger-striped cat; this cat died a million deaths, revived, and lived a million lives, and he was owned by various people who he didn’t really care for. The cat wasn’t afraid to die. Then one day the cat became a stray cat, which meant he was free, and he met a white female cat and the two of them spent their days together happily. Well, years passed and the white cat grew weak and died of old age, the tiger-striped cat cried a million times, and then he died too, except this time, he didn’t come back to life.  Sound familiar?”  Spike looked absolutely livid, his hands shaking on the bar, and you could see a thousand lifetimes flashing through his eyes.  “Oh, what, he hasn’t told you?” Spitting Dog crooned, turning to you with a sadistic smile on his face.  “That how you two lovebirds got together was almost exactly the same way he and the woman in gold met?  Washed up on your doorstep, half-dead, and of course you have to take care of him, it’s the polite thing to do, and then the Florence Nightingale Effect steps in?  Except I suppose _you_ stuck with him.

“And, oh, do you think he sees her when he looks at you?  That when he removes that pretty little getup all he can think about is her?  I bet you don’t even notice when your name isn’t the one he’s whispering in your ear.

“And _your_ woman in gold,” he continued, and dread settled in your stomach, “oh, what a pretty little thing she was.  Pretty talented doctor, too, might I add.  Shame she started patching up people who didn’t deserve it.  You know, it really is amazing how easy it is to make fires look like an accident.”

“I should kill you,” you snarled, curling the scalpel across his throat.  “I should kill you right now.”

And you did.  

And the last thing he said as blood was bubbling up from his lips, as he slid to the ground, the scalpel sliding cleanly out of him, rang in your head like a church bell.

“See you, Space Samurai.”

The cold muzzle of a gun pressed itself into the small of your back.

“Put down the knife and this doesn’t have to get ugly,” a gruff voice ordered, and this was no high-class casino security guard speaking, you could practically hear the gunk of years of Syndicate cigars clogging his lungs.  

But the world was all a red blur, and your hands were shaking, blood dripping from the point of your scalpel onto the floor, and you no longer registered anything around you except Sam’s voice in your head, her death rattle shuddering through your hands, nothing behind your eyelids except her calm, easy smile.

You spun around faster than should have been possible, knocking the gun out of the man’s hands and slicing his throat cleanly.  You vaguely registered Spike jumping into action as well, the clipped bangs of his Jericho 941 bouncing off of the high vaulted ceiling.  

And there were more of them appearing every second, rushing up the stairs and through doors in the walls, and you were spinning, tiny, tiny scalpel clutched in your hand, and there was blood arcing through the air like some great orchestral crescendo, and people were screaming, and somewhere you dimly remembered that you had a bounty to collect.  

You barreled through two men, knocking them to the ground, when a third leapt in front of you, gun pointed at your face, and you dipped to the side but not fast enough, you braced for impact –

A crimson flower blossomed on his forehead and he crumpled.  You turned back to see Spike nod at you from his spot behind a pillar, bullets whizzing past his face.  

You continued to slice your way through the Syndicate men, and it wasn’t like the encounter with the men from the hospital on the Bebop, where you were trying your best not to kill them.  No, no here you were all too happy to spill blood, to watch it splatter on the ground, to feel it splash over your arms and face, because all you remembered was Sam, the late nights woken up by nightmares, the warm mugs of green tea, the careful, precise lessons on the human body, the broad, freckled face, the quiet, deep laugh.   _They_ had taken it from you, all this time it had been _them_ , and you had been too stupid to realize it.

Sam had mentioned her ties to the Syndicate before, mentioned that they were cheap, dirty assholes who didn’t care about anyone but themselves, and that she had left as quickly as she could.  She had warned you that you might get caught up in all of it at some point.  You told her you didn’t care.

And somehow, in all that confusion, you spotted your mark, attempting to run through the crowds of Syndicate men, and you leapt towards him, flicking your wrist and embedding the scalpel in his Achilles tendon, a strangled cry bubbling through his lips.  

Adrenaline was shrieking in falsetto through your veins, you wrenched the scalpel out of his foot, earning another bloodcurdling scream, and, grabbing the man by the collar, hauled him onto your back.

“Spike!” you cried, and he was at your side in a second, and you saw Jet forcing his way through the crowd, firing his gun every which way, sweat drenching his brow, and then the three of you were running.

The bright lights and flashy crowds of the casino flew by in a blur, and the bounty was bouncing on your back uncomfortably, but you had carried heavier things.

The three (well, four) of you vaulted through the metal detectors, setting off a cacophony of shrill beeps and alarms, and there were shouts of security guards, screams of the public, but you could see the Bebop docked in the distance and none of it mattered.

You were the first to vault onto the loading dock as it began its slow descent upwards, with Spike and Jet following close behind.  You thanked whatever power that was that Faye had actually been paying attention, and she had the Bebop up and out of the casino docks before the loading bay was even done closing.  

You stumbled through the dimly lit hallways into the living room, the edges of your vision starting to blur, and roughly unloaded the bounty onto the hard metal floor.

Faye came rushing out, half-dressed, her hair mussed from sleep, and stared open-mouthed at the three of you, panting, bloody, and streaked with ash.

“What the hell _happened?_ ” she asked incredulously, staring from the man on the floor to the three of you and back.  

“What always happens,” Jet grumbled, shooting a sidelong glance at Spike.  “Except we actually got the bounty this time.  You can thank the Doc for that.”

“Great, who wants Spiegel’s ass now?” Faye groaned, slumping down on the sofa and nudging the bounty’s hand with her foot curiously.  

“Don’t know,” Jet answered.  “Perhaps Spike would like to enlighten us.”

Spike was silent for a few moments, chewing on the inside of his cheek, and no one was paying any attention to you, and you could feel the tension of long-unresolved issues winding its way through the Bebop’s recycled air.  

“Doesn’t matter,” was all Spike said, his gaze dark, “we just need to get away from them.”

“Spike,” Faye cried angrily, leaping out of her seat and striding over to him, “if you’re gonna pull this goddamn martyr business again I swear to _every power that exists_ –”

He looked at her, and she shut up.  You didn’t know what she saw, but judging from the look on her face, you didn’t want to.  

You took off into the observatory without a word.

* * *

As you were sitting on the floor, cleaning up your various scrapes and abrasions, Faye’s dress lying in a heap next to you, you heard him murmur from the door, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

You froze, the band-aid in your hand crinkling, and you considered for a moment.

“Would you have told me?”

He sighed, and stepped further into the room. “I suppose not.”

“Here.”  You tossed him a ramshackle first-aid kit, the red cross faded to almost nothingness, the whole thing bound closed with duct tape to replace the snapped hinges.  “Patch yourself up.”

Silence for a few moments, and you heard the all-too-loud screeching of the duct tape as it was wrenched off of the plastic case, the rustling of the contents.  

“Doc –”

_And, oh, do you think he sees her when he looks at you?_

“Don’t,” you whispered, but it pierced the air like a gunshot.  “Just –”

_That when he removes that pretty little getup all he can think about is her?_

“Doc, I –”

_I bet you don’t even notice when your name isn’t the one he’s whispering in your ear._

“Go,” you breathed, and the band-aid in your twisted fists finally tore, the sound meaning so much more in that wide, empty space.  “I can’t look at you right now.”

“ _Doc_ –” and you didn’t want to dwell on what was in his voice –

And you understood, then, that even though Julia was dead and cold and gone, she was still alive, to Spike, the memory of her departure still stinging in the back of his throat, and you knew that he couldn’t bear to have another ghost on his conscience, someone who entered his world just to die. He couldn’t have someone else haunting his waking hours and gallivanting in his nightmares.  

You couldn’t let him see her in you, even though he already did.

“Go, Spiegel,” you insisted, and you were bleeding, dripping on the floor, all of you, melting, falling away.  “Go.”

And he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this 10,000 word chapter is me desperately trying to figure out where i want this clusterfuck to go so basically excuse the whole thing  
> even after all that i have no idea what i want to happen next
> 
> i wonder how many times "stark light of the overheads" has appeared in this goddamn fic


	8. Are You Living in the Real World?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoo.....hoo boy......it's been a long while hasn't it. i've actually had this in my drafts for months, but, well, to summarize, i really like/liked this guy and along with school and everyday life it kinda just consumed me, but then haha! he is ignoring me and i'm using this to fill the void so! here we are but pay no attention to me and my petty teenage struggles i will most likely look back on this in a month and laugh at how stupid i was being

“It’s a good thing I put you in the red dress.”

You barked out a laugh, watching as the water in the washing machine slowly turned pink, your back pressed up against the bathroom door, the tile cool on your exposed skin.  

“I fucked up, Faye,” you mumbled, tousling your hair with one hand to hide how hard you were fighting the lump in your throat.  “I shouldn’t have stayed this long.”

She snorted.  “If it weren’t for you Spike would already be in the ground and we’d be starving after yet another unsuccessful bounty.  You did good.”

You shook your head, the beginnings of hysteria bubbling up in your chest.  “Did you ever meet her?” you asked, chewing on your lip so hard that it started to bleed, but the iron sting in the back of your throat helped to distract you.  “Julia?”

Faye was silent for a few moments, shifting from her position next to you, the points of her shoulder blades poking into the bathroom door.  “Yeah,” she said finally, eyes distant.  “Once.  We met by chance at an airport on Mars.  I helped get these Syndicate guys off her tail.  I didn’t even know who she was, or who it was that was chasing her, but I helped her out anyways.  Eventually I figured out that she was the Julia.  She gave me a message for Spike, and that was it.  I never saw her again.”

“What . . . was she like?” you murmured, dabbing at your bloody lip with the back of your hand.  

Faye sighed, digging in her pockets to pull out a beat-up pack of cigarettes and a lighter.  Clasping the cigarette between her teeth, she flicked the lighter open and lit it, taking a long drag and exhaling a large cloud of smoke towards the ceiling.

You winced, but said nothing.

“Mysterious,” she finally said, reaching up to tap the ashes into the sink.  “Calm.  Her voice was steady.  Kinda seemed like she . . . wasn’t real, almost.”

“What did she . . . look like?”

Faye furrowed her brow, sticking the cigarette back in her teeth and taking another drag.  

“Tall.  Slim,” she exhaled with another cloud of smoke.  “Long blonde hair.  Wavy, I think.  Long nose.  Red lips.  Sad green eyes.”

You tried to picture it, what he must have fallen in love with, sparkling green eyes and a red-lipped smile, wavy blonde hair flouncing in an imaginary breeze, and then you thought about yourself.  You hugged your knees to your chest, your nails digging into your bare flesh.

“I feel so stupid,” you murmured, chuckling softly.  “I shouldn’t be so torn up over something as stupid as a man.”

“Men are awful like that,” Faye said, her voice tight.  “Empty promises, empty words.  Empty everything.”

“I should’ve known he wouldn’t get over her so easily.  I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It’s not your fault,” Faye tried to reassure you, but the words were as thin as the smoke curling from her lungs.  

“Was any of it real?” you mumbled, voice crackling.

“You know, I’ve been tagging along with him for a while,” Faye said, and the tobacco smoke was stinging your nostrils, but you were far beyond the point of caring.  “He was always alone, always by himself.  Even with other people around him, it was like he lived in another world.  After that whole deal with the Syndicate and Julia, I thought that he would be absolutely wrecked.  I thought he was gonna be a shell.  Almost dead, but not quite there yet.  You helped him.  I don’t know if he was just stamping Julia’s memory on to you or what, but . . . whatever it was, you helped him heal.  Even just a little bit.  He’s different now.  He’s still quiet, still sealed off, but there’s something . . . nostalgic about him now, almost.  Like I’m looking at an old photograph of him, or something like that.  It’s hard to explain.”

You rested your head back against the cold steel of the bathroom door and watched the smoke undulate against the ceiling.  

“I have to leave,” you whispered, and you shook your head to stop Faye’s protest.  “They’re gonna come after the rest of you now.  I can’t . . . I can’t drag other people into this.  This is between me and them.”

“If you think you’re gonna pull some Spike-esque last stand bullshit –”

You laughed, but it was dry, without humor.

“No,” you sighed.  “I’m just gonna get as far away as possible.  See if I can slip back into the crowd again.  I’ve done it before.”

“He’ll go after you.”

You snorted.  “I managed to slip away from the biggest crime organization in the current solar system, and I didn’t even leave the planet.  He won’t find me.”

“You don’t understand,” Faye insisted, her cigarette forgotten, the hot ashes tumbling to smoke against her panty hose.  “She left him, too.  I don’t know . . . how he’ll handle it.  It won’t be pretty.”

“If I don’t leave, they’ll kill him,” you responded, and it felt like your stomach was trying to tear itself in half.  “It’s better if he’s alive and hates me . . . than the other way around.”

“Better for who?!” Faye cried, her voice rising in pitch.  “Who benefits here?!  Spike’ll just . . . he’ll go back to the way he was, careless and stupid and always trying to die, but it’ll be _worse_.  And we . . . me and Jet . . . we’ll have to watch him die, _again_.”

The idea came to you slowly, like a creeping, poisonous vine, and bile rose in the back of your throat.

“I’ll leave a trail,” you whispered, and you wanted to vomit, “I’ll keep giving him signs.  Hope.  I’ll lead him in the wrong direction for the rest of our lives.”

There was silence.

“Diabolical,” Faye chuckled, her voice cracking.  “It’s so evil I want to cry.”  She took a long drag off her cigarette, lazily wiping the ashes off of her legs.  “You’ll make a good bounty hunter yet.”

“I’m sorry, Faye,” you choked out, and you knew that the best case scenario would be the two of you never seeing each other again.  “I’m sorry.”

* * *

The Bebop was quiet.  Time no longer had any meaning, and the only marker you had was the steady thump of the heart nestled in your ribcage.  You had gotten somewhat used to the schedule.  10 hours to sleep, 14 to be awake, give or take a few.

Everything was packed, everything you needed, anyways.  You traced your fingers lovingly over that old wooden table, the one a disgruntled neighbor had made for you after you had performed his examination on the dirt floor of your home.   The one Jet had hauled all the way to the ship for you, face red and puffy, bald head shining with sweat.  The one where you had first opened up Spike Spiegel and stitched together his insides, before that began to have a much more figurative meaning.  

You trailed your fingertips over the bloodstained grooves, dark chips of the stuff crusting up under your nails and dusting the pads of your fingers.  You brushed it off on the hem of your shirt.

A piece of paper and stubby pencil peeked out at you from an adjacent box, and you shakily picked them up, leaning on the table for support as the slow, out-of-practice sounds of pencil on paper echoed up to the vaulted ceiling.

The living room was not empty when you walked back into it.  

A quiet click, a short burst of orange flame, illuminating a carefully trimmed beard and glinting off of an electronic eyepiece.

“Jet,” you breathed, preparing yourself for the worst.  A gun, fists, anything.  

Maybe, if you died here, Spike wouldn’t hurt as much.

Jet grunted in reply, not moving from his position, and though your eyes were still struggling to adjust to the darkness, you could feel his eyes boring into you.

“Leaving, huh,” was all he said, taking a long, slow drag off his cigarette.

Out of all the Bebop members, you had interacted with Jet the least.  Always keeping to himself, tending to those bonsai trees in his room he thought no one knew about, always on the lookout for bounties and food and money.  You would never say it to his face, of course, or really to anyone else, but Jet was like the mother of this crew.  He held it all together; shakily, you would admit, but together all the same.  

He was also the one you were most afraid of, because you didn’t know who he was.  What made him tick.  What to say, what not to say, how to string a sentence together without one of his hands twitching for the holster perpetually at his hip.

An enigma, to be sure, but you were familiar with those.

“Yeah,” you breathed, even that short exhalation sounding as loud as a cymbal crash in the still, silent air.

Another drag, a long exhale.

“I don’t blame you.”  A scritching sound of fingertips on stubble.  “Spike wouldn’t agree with me, though.”

“No,” you said.  “I suppose he wouldn’t.”

“He’ll look for you until the day he dies.”

The words tightened your chest like a bowstring.

“I know,” you breathed.  “But maybe then he’ll live a long life.”

“Long doesn’t necessarily mean happy.”

“Maybe . . .,” for the briefest of moments, your desperation shone through, your voice breaking, “maybe one day . . . the Syndicate. . . .”

“You and I both know that isn’t true.”

Your hand tightened on the strap of the bag slung over your shoulder.

“I don’t know what else to do.  Running is all I know . . . all I _can_ do.”

“So you’re gonna slip off when we dock to refuel?”  You nodded, not even bothering to be surprised that he knew so much.  “Leave just as the ship’s about to.  That way you can get some good distance before Spike makes me turn around.”

You nodded, and, suddenly remembering, dug the scrap of paper, folded now, out of your pocket.

“Could you give him this?” you asked, walking over to him, and he took it tentatively.  Slowly, he nodded.  ”Thank you, Jet,” you said softly, and he snorted.

“Don’t mention it, kid.”

* * *

The roar of the ship’s engines starting woke him.  He rolled over in bed, and sat up in one fluid motion, fingertips brushing the ceiling in a luxurious stretch.

He wobbled out of bed, feet unsteady, and tried to yank a few fingers through his mess of tangled brown hair.  Futile, as always.  He shuffled out of his bedroom, scratching the back of his neck, and as he paused, he felt the hair prick up against his fingers.

The Bebop hadn’t been this quiet in months.  

He was definitely awake now, half-jogging to the living room to find Faye reclined on the couch, smoking absentmindedly, her head tilted back towards the ceiling, eyes flat and looking at nothing.  

“Faye,” he ground out, his voice gravelly with sleep, “where are Doc and Jet?”

Her face twitched, and she jerked her thumb towards the bridge, mumbling, “That way” distractedly.

He padded there quickly, mind circling, and he found Jet piloting the ship through hyperspace, feet perched up on the dashboard, the stub of a cigarette still clutched in his fingers, long forgotten.  

“Jet . . . where’s Doc?” Spike asked, pretending not to feel the chill curling in his stomach.

Without a single word, Jet tossed a neatly folded slip of paper over his shoulder.

* * *

The bar was dark, and crowded.  A female singer was crooning somewhere in the back, clear voice cutting through the haze of cigar smoke and booze, and you swirled the whiskey in your glass.  You knew the song, vaguely, snatches of it emerging from the depths of your memory, picked up from years of walking through streets filled with open bars and aspiring singers.

You knocked back the whiskey in a single throw, wincing as it burned a fiery path down your esophagus.  But the pain was good.  It clouded your mind and helped you forget.  You were beginning to understand the appeal of these sorts of places now.

You didn’t know what you were doing here.  You should be on a shuttle halfway to who-knows-where, this rest stop was full of them, but instead, you were here.  You didn’t quite know how it had happened.  You had been walking, pack heavy over your shoulder, and had been passing by an open bar door, as you had done thousands of times, back on Mars.  And suddenly you had been staring up at the vast black void of space and had felt so unbearably lonely that you had dived into the mass of writhing, drunk people without a second thought.

The bartender was watching you worriedly, a guy maybe in his 40s, mixing a drink with practised hands.  You lifted your glass slightly, and he filled it halfway with muddy brown whiskey.  You nodded to him in thanks, and downed it again, twisting your lips and setting the glass down on the bar with a dull thud.  You had chosen to ignore the mysterious dark particles swirling at the bottom.

You rested your elbow on the bar and nestled your chin in your hand, watching the performer sway on the stage jutting from the back, red lipstick glinting in the dim light.  She was good.  You had to remind yourself to throw a few woolongs in the tip jar.  

“You waitin’ for someone?” a voice asked, and you turned to see the bartender staring you fully in the face.  You shook your head slowly, and he blinked.  You tapped your glass for another round, but he didn’t move.  “‘Scuse me for sayin’ so, but you don’t look the type to be here, ma’am.”

You smiled wryly, eyes glazed over, your whole body feeling a little bit fuzzy.  “I suppose not,” you mumbled, picking up the glass in trembling fingers and twirling it, watching the light reflect off of the faults and hastily worked designs.  

“A shuttle to Earth leaves in ten minutes,” he went on, dropping his eyes to clean a glass with a spotted dishtowel.  “Turn left outta here.  You can make it if you run.”  You set the glass down slowly, blinking in surprise.  “Cargo ship.  Won’t notice a straggler.”

Finally understanding, you barked out a laugh, and, rummaging in your pockets for a few moments, slid a generous tip over the bar counter.  

“Thanks,” you managed, shooting him a lopsided smile, and, collecting your bag off the chair next to you, you started to make your way towards the door.

“And, ma’am,” he called after you, the sound almost lost amongst the din of the bar patrons, but you turned all the same.  “You should call them.”

You cocked your head.  “Call who?”

The bartender flashed you a soft, knowing smile.  

“Whoever it is you’re hung up on.”

* * *

You had to run to make it.  The loading dock was just starting to rise, a dock worker turned his back away for a split second, and you were leaping, sliding up the ramp without a sound.  You landed in a box full of potatoes, and the whole thing tumbled over, dumping you and its contents onto the floor.  Potatoes dinged off of your spine and the back of your head, and you sank onto the cold metal with a sigh.  

Too tired to rise, you swept the area around you with a lazy arm and rolled onto your back, staring up at the low cargo bay ceiling.  Muffled voices shouted from outside, and the floor began to vibrate, the potatoes jittering as a dull roar emerged from somewhere below the back of your skull.  

The ship rose in a sudden jerk, sending your head up and then brutally back down again, and you hissed, sitting up and rubbing the sore spot as the jitters smoothed out and you felt the ship rising faster.  

Standing shakily, you stumbled your way over to the tiny port window, hand resting idly on the back of your neck as you watched the rest stop’s docks grow farther and farther away, the people and buildings quickly losing all shape and definition before being lost in the haze of the artificial atmosphere.  

The familiar feeling of your stomach trying to exit your body through your mouth signaled the ship’s entrance into hyperspace, and you sank to the floor again, back against the wall.  You took a deep breath, shoving your emotions deep down into the hollow of your chest, gritting your teeth and trying to think of nothing except the cool metal against your skin, the rumbling sounds of the ship’s engines, the pounding of your heart.

It had been easy.  Incredibly so.  To walk off the ship, out of his life, to rip the threads binding you and burn them to the ground.  

You were exceptionally good at burning things, you thought.

* * *

His hair was a mess, and he wasn’t wearing any socks.  The rough leather of his worn out shoes scraped against the sides of his toes and the back of his heel and he was going to have one hell of a blister but none of it mattered, none of it mattered at all because it was happening again.

A cold, stone-grey graveyard, rain falling down in sheets, his hair sticking to his face and water running into his eyes, coat growing heavier on his shoulders as the fabric sagged with the weight of the downpour, and she still had not come.  His watch was tickticktick _ticking_ and she still wasn’t here, where was she where was she where was she –

His feet took him towards the docks, around street vendors and beggars crouched against shopfronts, hands stuffed deep in his pockets, head bowed low against the chill.  An artificial outpost with an artificial atmosphere shouldn’t _be_ this chilly, until he realized he was shivering down to the bone.  

Not again.

A low whir sprung up in the ground, reverberating in the arches of his feet, and he began to walk faster, heels drumming a staccato rhythm against the pavement as the humming grew louder, the buildings shorter, the starry sky closer.

He skidded to a stop, buffeted back by a gust of wind as a large cargo ship rose off of the docks, old-fashioned engines stirring absentmindedly, like an old man trying to be roused out of bed.  The whole ship shifted and dipped erratically, and a few of the dock workers were swearing, but after a few short, clipped discourses and the banging of a wrench on the control console, the vessel steadied out, and rose faster.

A flicker of movement at the tiny window in the cargo bay, and Spike had his hands wrapped in a dock worker’s shirt collar.

“Where is it going,” he growled, leaning in close.  

“E-Ea-E-Earth,” the man stammered nervously, sweat beading on his temples and sliding past his wide, frightened eyes.  He couldn’t have been more than 20.

Swearing viciously, Spike threw the man away from him, stalking away from the docks with a murderous look carved deep into the furrow of his brow.  

Fine, then.

He refused to let it happen again.  Absolutely, whole-heartedly refused.

If that’s what it took, then fine.

* * *

You were shaking.  

It wasn’t quite the fact that the ship was rocking to and fro, erratically, like you were hopping a piggyback ride on a viciously drunk man, and it wasn’t even the fact that space was floating by your window.

Rather, the lack of it.

Rather, that there was far less room between the potato crates than you had originally anticipated.  And as the ship jolted and boxes skipped along the floor, you had been forced into an extremely awkward position against one wall, crates on either side of you, arms poised over your head to prevent the next potato downpour from denting your skull.  

And, of course, the fact that the crates had begun to press so close that you could no longer _lower_ your arms.

It had been almost comical at first, and you had snorted, but then the prickling started.

And with the prickling, the loss of blood flow to the very tips of your fingers, came the memories.  The plastic straps yanked under the heels of your palms, arms hauled upwards, head lolling between them with nothing to hold it up.  Needles poking down down down, down into your flesh, through your ribs, and the anesthesiologist had been shoved out of the room when their insistent cries of _it hasn’t set in yet_ had become too irritating.  And you could _feel_ it, your arms going numb, the needle poking down, ever down down down down _down_ , down into your lungs your heart your soul you were dying you were dying you were _dying_ –

You writhed between the crates as the prickling settled down your arms, the needle settled in your diaphragm, you needed to get out you needed to leave you needed to leave, the crates weren’t moving, they weren’t budging, you were kicking and twisting but they just wouldn’t _move_ , there was no strength in your limbs, colored spots popped before your eyes, there was a jolt and the needle sank deeper and you flew forward, root vegetables zinging all around you –

You landed with a thud on the cold floor, a potato very narrowly missing your face, and you wiggled your fingers desperately, banged your arms against the steel, pinched your left forearm, your right, alternating until there was a patchwork of half-moon indents cascading from your elbow to the base of your shoulder, and as the tingling faded, your breathing picked up the slack, your heart pitter pattering and the needle was twitching –

_It isn’t there it isn’t there it isn’t there that was years ago snap out of it stupid stupid stupid._

You took a breath in through your teeth, dug your nails into the floor rivets, a few of the half-moons dotting your arms were starting to pepper with pinpricks of blood, and there was a warm mug of chamomile tea in your hands.

Sam’s voice was in your ear, soothing you in that singsong way of hers, and the strangely comforting recycled cigarette smoke scent of the Bebop was there, too.  

You didn’t know how long you lay there, fighting down the waves of panic, desperately searching for the smooth patches of calm in between, until the waves got smaller, the patches bigger, and it was over.  

You lay for a few moments longer, collecting yourself, then rose on shaky arms, and before you could even be reminded, pulled your sleeves down.  

You swayed as you stood, vision taking a few moments to sharpen, and decided now would be as good a time as any.

You heaved a whirling roundhouse kick at the empty air, relishing the way your muscles sang with the exertion, and followed it up with an elbow to an imaginary jaw.  Trying to retain the circular momentum, you punched with the other arm, stepping forward, crouching, and sweeping your leg out to finish off the imaginary opponent.  You paused, squatted on the floor, and huffed.

You swept out with the other leg, using the momentum to spin yourself back to standing, and ducked a phantom fist.  You spun, jabbed, parried, kneed, constructing an entire fight scene in your head, a large, burly man, then two, then three.  You kicked and punched until your breath was coming in ragged gasps, until you laid right down on the floor, rivets digging into your face, and promptly fell asleep.

* * *

You were woken by the ship slamming into the ground.  The force of the impact hurtled you from your position on the floor,  and your arms flailed numbly as you tried not to faceplant into the metal.  

But sometimes life just hates everyone, and the rivets quickly carved a pattern smack in the middle of your cheek.  

Groaning pitifully, you rose to a kneeling position, listening to the rumble of the potatoes settling and closing your eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath.  Getting to your feet, you fished your bag out from a corner, glancing quickly at the contents to make sure nothing was irreparably damaged, and burrowed yourself into a box of potatoes.  

Just as you were placing the last one over your face, the door creaked open, and you held your breath.  

You could tell it was a man who walked in by the smell.  Sweat-stained flannel, diesel, and the sharp tang of aftershave.  The man sighed, lumbering into the room, and there was a faint scratching sound.  Older, heavy, stubble, you concluded in quick succession, gnawing on the inside of your cheek.  You felt his hands scrabble at the sides of the box, what you assumed to be decades-old calluses scratching at the cardboard, but he lifted the box with almost superhuman ease.

He deftly carried it off of the ship, humming a faint tune, and dumped it unceremoniously on the ground.  You struggled to maintain your position, trying to settle as much weight as possible into your tailbone, but you felt him pause as the box rocked from side to side.  A few seconds of waiting, trying to restrain your ragged breathing, and then the scuff of boots in the dirt receding back towards the ship.  

You could hear the faint sounds of more shuffling, and felt the thud of another box being dumped next to you.  Four more followed it, and an engine rumbled to life somewhere to your left, followed by a high-pitched girl’s voice, circling oddly as if she was spinning, cartwheeling.  

“Hey, hey!  What’d we get today?  Anything fun?” she shouted excitedly, what sounded like bare feet bounding over to peer directly into your box.  She hummed thoughtfully, picking up a potato and inspecting it.  Sighing dramatically, she tossed the potato back into the box, giving it a resounding kick.  

The box went tumbling over, and you along with it.  

The blueness of the sky stung your eyes, as you lay there, surrounded by potatoes, utterly unsure of what to do.  

“Oh,” the man said, and you could see him now, tall, taller than Spike, burly, with a square jawline and hair that stuck out almost horizontally from above his ears, receding at the forehead to form a widow’s peak.  His green eyes were bright and intense as he shuffled over to stare down at you, the confusion on his face quickly replaced by irritation.

But before he could get another word out, the girl was clambering over him like a monkey, scuttling down to crouch next to you, spiky red hair bouncing and the goggles perched atop her head slipping as she stared down at you.

“Oh, oh, is it dead, is it dead?” she asked gleefully, poking you sharply, and you flinched, spinning away from her and rolling onto your feet, bag bouncing against your hip.  “Not dead, not dead!” the girl cheered, springing to her feet and bouncing around you.  Her eyes were large, brown, excited, her limbs skinny as twigs as she flopped and whirled, her bare feet pounding into the earth.  

“A stowaway, eh?” the man grumbled, walking closer to you, and instinctively you took a step back.  

“Pleased to meet you!” the young girl interrupted again, circling back into view and thrusting her face uncomfortably close to yours.  “Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky the fourth, Ed for short, at your service!”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm glad i didn't write any fic for nanowrimo because the shit in the original novel i was writing got wicked personal and borderline libelous because i am angry and petty! haha! but now it's december, the men have shaved, christmas is coming, and i am a new woman   
> anyways! another chapter will probably be arriving soon because i am once again using escapism to cope but since spike and reader's relationship bears no resemblance to aforementioned dickhead and i, you don't have to worry about me letting off steam like i'm doing right now, so anyways! see you soon!


	9. See You Cowgirl, Someday, Somewhere!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> back again!! i'm back in the spirit........i'm ready to wrap this fic up after so long.................the ending i have planned out is real good in my head but we'll see..........

“Françoise,” the man sighed disapprovingly, laying a hand on the girl’s head to still her movements.  

“Ed’s welcoming a guest!” she retorted, wriggling from his grasp with practiced ease.  “She’s come all this way!”

“For nothing,” the man snorted. 

“But Papa, Papa!” 

“She’s a fugitive, I’ll bet,” he grumbled, crossing his arms.

“No,” you blurted out, voice cracking, and the both of them looked surprised.  “I’m . . .” You searched for something to say, something meaningful, something that would convince them that you were definitely  _ not  _ someone dangerous (except you were),  _ not  _ a criminal (debatable), and  _ not  _ running from a war or the law, by any means (you were hoping crazy power-hungry syndicates didn’t fall under that category).  “I’m a doctor,” you said, for lack of anything else.  

“What’s a doctor doing hiding in my shipment of potatoes?” the man asked, frown deepening, and a flutter of anxiety lodged itself in your chest.  

“I’m . . . from Mars,” you started, because Sam had always told you that a lie was best when sprinkled with truth.  “Things got . . . a little hectic there.”  His expression did not change, giving you no clue as to whether he had any inkling of what went on on other planets or not, and you wanted to curse.  “I hopped on the first freighter that would take me.  I just happened to end up in your box of potatoes.  Sorry about that, by the way.”

He snorted, sizing you up and down, eyes so unnaturally green that it was putting you off.  “Alright, Doctor,” he finally said, the way he drew out the last word giving the distinct impression that he had more than a few doubts about its authenticity, “no harm, no foul.  Be on your way, now.”

“Papaaaaaa!” Ed whined, clamping all four limbs around her father’s arm and peering up at him with big eyes.  “Where’s she supposed to stay!”

“It’s none of my business,” he grumbled, trying in vain to shake his daughter off as you took a few steps back, muscles tensing, preparing to run.  

“She  _ has  _ to stay with us!  There’s supposed to be a meteor shower, you know that!”

Something in the man’s face twitched, and his expression eased up, if only by a hair.  “And?”

“ _ And  _ she’ll die!  She’ll die, Papa!  Are you okay with letting someone  _ die,  _ Papa?  Ed’s not!  Ed won’t let her die!”  

“Françoise,  _ don’t –” _

Before you could quite process what was happening, the girl had wrapped her hand around yours, and it was unbelievably rough, and callused, and scarred, so much so that it made yours seem soft in comparison.

Christ, who  _ was  _ this girl?

She dragged you over towards her father as a protest bubbled from your lips, but she shushed you with a huge grin.  “Ed hasn’t had friends in a while, it’ll be good to have some again.  Ein doesn’t talk back, you know?”

“Françoise, we can’t, we don’t know who she is –”

“So we’ll learn!” the girl insisted, and the stubborn look in her eyes brooked no room for argument.  Her father sighed heavily, giving you a fearsome look before turning around and beckoning to the crates of potatoes.

“Come on, stranger.  If my daughter insists on housing you for a night, then you can at least help clean up your mess.”

* * *

If you had not known better, you would have called their house a cave, at first glance.  Bare earthen walls, low ceilings, dim halogen lights flickering in what looked to be hand-carved alcoves.  There were marks of life all around, handprints on the walls, big and small footprints alike stomped into the earth, nail-carved nicks on the edges of tables and chairs, and the musky smell of unwashed clothes and just pure human hanging in the air.

“Welcome!” Ed, Françoise, whoever, crowed, twirling around the floor with steps as light and circling as breathing.  “This is our house!  Totally meteor-proof!” She emphasized this point by banging her palm resolutely on the wall, shaking a cloud of dirt from the ceiling.  “I swear!”  

At her words, a yipping sound emerged from deeper within the house, and a corgi pelted out of a doorway, fur tinged with dirt, eyes sparkling in a way you had never seen in an animal, and launched itself straight into you.

You stumbled, swearing loudly, your box of potatoes landing clumsily on the ground.  The dog rebounded quickly, scrabbling off of you and circling your feet, snuffling loudly.   Noticing this, Ed grinned widely and flung herself out of her chair, joining the dog to sniff at your feet, and you emitted a strangled noise, stumbling back straight into her father.

“Don’t mind her,” he sighed, setting a box of potatoes gingerly onto the ground.  

“You smell . . .,” Ed began, lifting her head, nose scrunched in thought.  “Familiar.”  The dog barked in agreement, stump of a tail wagging back and forth, and you brought the front of your shirt to your nose, inhaling deeply.  All you could smell was stale recycled spaceship air, the earthy smell of potatoes and dirt, sweat, and the ever-so-faint hint of cigarette smoke.  

The dog barked again, continuing to wag its tail, and stared at you with eyes that were – expectant?  It was almost as if it was trying to tell you something, but you immediately banished the thought.  Dogs weren’t that intelligent, not even in this day and age.

“Can’t imagine why,” you brushed off, and it was enough to send her shrugging and spiraling back to her feet, but the dog kept staring at you, with deep, unblinking brown eyes, and it was starting to unsettle you far more than you would ever admit

“Ed’s so excited!” the girl repeated for the umpteenth time, snapping your attention away from the dog as she cartwheeled across the room.  “We haven’t had guests in so long!”

“Or ever,” her father grumbled, shutting and bolting the door behind him.  You tried not to be perturbed by how thick the metal was, or how sturdy the lock seemed to be.  “Cartographers don’t have many friends.”

“Cartographer?” you questioned, prying open the flaps of the box nearest to you to distract yourself and loading a dozen potatoes into the makeshift hammock of your shirt.  Ed’s father nodded towards the dingy steel sink propped up by wooden planks against one wall, and you resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow.  You walked over and poured them in, something rattling deep down in the twisting pipe that curled below and upwards into the wall, and went back for more.  Ed was still moving, walking on her hands across the floor, and you stifled a laugh.  “Seems like that’d be kinda hard with the whole – you know –” you continued.

Ed’s father laughed, his teeth large and white, and it made you go still for a split second.  “The Earth’s constantly changing.  Cartographers are in demand.”  He dumped a whole box of the root vegetables into the sink, nimbly catching the ones that bounced out with his free hand, and you marveled at the dexterity of his tree trunk-esque limbs.  

“Wouldn’t suppose this in-demand cartographer would have a name?” you asked breezily, loading more potatoes into your arms.  

“Siniz Hesap Lütfen Appledelhi,” he rattled off the way one would the chemical name for a prescription medication, and you blinked.  “Siniz, if you please.”

“Siniz,” you repeated, rolling the word around on your tongue.  “Alright then.”

“What about you, Doc?” he countered, and the word sent such a lance through your chest that for a split second you thought that he had stabbed you.  

You thought about them.  You thought about Jet and his sharp angled beard, his suspicious eyes, his creaking arm, the way he meticulously cared for the bonsai trees he thought no one knew about.  You thought about his last farewell, his sad grimace, the note he had promised to pass along.  

You thought of Faye, remembered her dark red lips, shiny black hair, her grating sarcastic voice and the way her teeth had gnawed at the inside of her cheek and her eyes had shone with a thousand memories when you told her you were leaving.  You thought about the dress, the gunfight at the casino, how Faye had laid her past bare in front of you as she cleaned out the barrel of her gun.

You thought of him.  You gripped the edge of the sink for support and you wondered where he was, what he was doing, and you could hear exactly how he would say it, how the words would roll off his tongue, how his lips would quirk into a half-smirk.  You thought about his eyes, half-dead but still painstakingly alive, his callused hands, his tobacco breath, the scar you had fixed yourself and the way it cut a clean line across his stomach. You thought about his bed, the warm, clean linen sheets, the whir of the Bebop’s engines, his heavy, deep breathing.  You thought of Julia, and you hadn’t thought it could hurt any more.

“That’s fine,” you said, a bit too breathy, and Siniz noticed, of course he did, but you plowed on because maybe if you wrung out the title enough it would start to lose its meaning.  “Just Doc’s fine.”

“You ever actually  _ performed  _ any type of medical procedure, Doc?”

The Syndicate steps, the clean slash to his stomach, the faint pattering of his pulse, his still body lying there for three straight days as you sewed him back together, layer by layer.  Your customers, by the dozens, men and women and children.  “A wide range of procedures, and I once performed major abdominal surgery,” you stated, feeling uncomfortably like a child petulantly stating their meager accomplishments.  

Siniz hummed, looking you critically up and down.  

“Papa, don’t be so  _ mean, _ ” Ed chastised.  “Ed believes her.  Look at her hands.”

Pure instinct caused you to hide said hands behind your back as she said this, but at Siniz’s piercing stare you reluctantly held them out for inspection.  He grasped them with large, callused fingers, turning your hands and studying them as if they were an especially interesting rock, or something he wanted to buy but felt he was paying too much for.  

“Alright,” he acquiesced, releasing your hands at last.  “Those aren’t the hands of a Martian socialite, that’s for sure, but whether those surgical skills were used to bandage old women or chop people up is a different matter.”

“Please,” you snapped, patience wearing thin, “regardless of whether I’m a knife-wielding psychopath or not, you could kill me easily if you wanted to.  And unless your daughter isn’t as tough as I think she is, I really don’t see how I pose a danger to either of you.”

Siniz frowned, brow furrowing in thought, but Ed only flashed you a wide grin, somersaulting over to crouch at your feet, corgi companion trotting along after her.  

“Ed likes you!” she announced, rocking back and forth on her heels.  “You should help out!  There’s lots of work to do.  Papa can make dinner, and you and I can go scavenge!”

“Françoise, I really don’t feel as if that’s –”

“Lighten up, Papa, Ed has Ein with her!”

“Ein?” you blurted without thinking, the word jumpstarting something in your brain, and Ed looked at you curiously, cocking her fluffy red head to the side.  She had said the word before, when you had first tumbled out of the potato box, but you had been far too concerned with not having your neck snapped by her father that you hadn’t been paying much attention.  “For Einstein?”

She only blinked at you, the child’s version of surprise mixed with happiness glancing across her eyes, and you remembered one of your first conversations with Faye, the Bebop humming in the background, the soft squeaks of the rag against the barrel of her gun, her tobacco-scented breath as she pointed out all the bits and bobs, all the parts to clean, her high laugh as she told you about her past –

_ “ _ _ There was another kid who used to be here, Ed, but she was only 13 . . . . Met her dad back on Earth, left the ship with the dog to go live with him instead . . . . Some genetically engineered super-genius dog that Spike brought back from some mission or other . . . . Jet named him Ein, for Einstein.” _

“Oh . . .,” you breathed, the irony of the situation forcing a gurgly laugh out of you as your knees turned to water, and without anything to grab hold of you simply sank to the floor, hands scrunching up the fabric of your shirt.  “Oh.  You’re Ed.”

“Yes,” the girl replied, cocking her head further, as if this fact hadn’t been established a million times over, and you laughed again.   _ Guess the destitute space nomad’s life isn’t for everyone. _

You smiled, and there was a suspiciously large lump in your throat as you choked out, “Faye’s told me all about you.”

* * *

“The broad’s gone rogue.”

Conroy looked up from his blackjack hand, cigarette clenched between his teeth. “Hah?” he barked, dark eyes narrowing, and Kenji snorted derisively.

“She’s  _ gone,  _ dimwit.  Ran off.  Lover boy’s all by his lonesome now.”

“So?” Conroy replied, turning his attention back to the cards in his hands.  “He’s not the one we want anyways.  One less obstacle in the way.”

“He’s  _ looking  _ for her,” Kenji said, and that drew Conroy’s full attention.  He slowly laid the cards down on the table, waving away the protest from Ahmed, who had been interrupted in the midst of a winning hand.  “Guy was the best bounty hunter this side of the asteroid belt.  How much you wanna bet he’ll lead us right to her?”

“I like the way you think, Kennie-boy,” Conroy said with a grin, blowing a cloud of smoke off to the side.  “That tracker still up and running?”

“In prime condition,” Kenji affirmed and Conroy’s grin widened.  “Knew that suicide mission of a raid would pay off in the long run.”

“Now  _ that  _ was batshit,” Conroy said, rocking his chair onto its back two legs and taking a long drag from his cigarette.  “How in the hell did the boss approve a team of five guys ambushing their ship in the middle of space?  With no backup?”

“Hell if I know,” Kenji sighed, pulling up a chair and straddling it backwards, placing his elbows on the backrest and his chin in his hand.  “At least they all came back alive.”

“Alive, but scared shitless,” Conroy retorted, beckoning to Ahmed as he slapped a card down on the table.  “You sure going after her is a good idea?  The stories those guys told gave me the chills.”

“We’re the Syndicate for Christ’s sake,” Kenji griped.  

“A Syndicate that somehow managed to let Spike Spiegel, a man with a foot-and-a-half long gash in his stomach, escape from our front doorstep.”

“Details, details,” Kenji grunted.  “At least we know where he is now.   _ Another  _ thing the raid accomplished.”

“Whatever,” Conroy huffed, shuffling his cards  “All I’m saying is, both of them were hard enough to go up against separately.  If we really are gonna follow Spiegel straight to her, we need to have a plan.”  The cards flew between his hands, briefly obscuring the troubled look in his eyes.  “I can’t even imagine what kind of hell those two could raise if they worked together.”

“I’m telling you, it’s not gonna be a problem,” Kenji assured as Ahmed dealt another hand and Conroy cursed under his breath.  “New management, after all, am I right?  That Vincent guy was batshit from the start, but now . . .”

“‘Now’ what?” Conroy questioned, quirking a brow, and Kenji’s grin was borderline maniacal.  

“Now we can show the whole solar system just how powerful we are.”

* * *

“Spike, I’m telling you –”

“Shut up.”

“She  _ said  _ not to –”

“Shut  _ up.” _

“ _ Listen to me, dammit! _ ” Jet barked, slamming his metal hand on the navigation console, the sound ringing through the room.  “We aren’t gonna find her by hopping from planet to planet based on an extremely vague set of clues she may or may not have even left in the first place.”

“They’re hers, I know they’re hers, we just need to –”

“What we  _ need  _ to do is stop, take a fucking seat, and maybe, perhaps think about  _ why  _ she left in the first place.”

“I told you, the Syndicate’s after her, and we need to find her before they do.”

“Spike, you are as stupid as your hair is large.   _ You are missing the point. _ ”

“What point, there is no point, she left because they were tailing her and we were slowing her down, plus she didn’t want to endanger the ship –”

“She did it to protect you, numbnuts.”  Spike’s mouth clicked shut, his expression somewhere between anger and shock.  “She knew the Syndicate would use you to get to her, and ever since you killed their old boss you stopped being their primary target.  She knew that if she left she would be keeping you out of danger, since she’s their first priority.  If we follow her, we’ll be leading them straight to her.”

Spike’s jaw ground, the muscles in his face contorting, and his gaze darkened.  “I don’t care.”

“Spike –”

“I don’t care!” he spat, expression borderline feral.  “I killed them all before, I’ll do it again.  I won’t let them –”  He thought of her arms, riddled with scars.  He thought of her face, as she laid two decades of pain out before them, pain ground so deep into the lines under her eyes that he knew it would never leave, not entirely.  He thought of her dry laugh, her faraway gaze, her biting humor and sharp wit.  He thought of her smile.  

He bit back whatever it was that he was about to say, and strode out of the room, hands shoved deep into his pockets.

“Wait, Spike!” Jet yelled after him, and the sound of the door sliding shut was the only thing that answered him.

It seemed like forever since Spike had been this quiet.  He had been, often, before the doctor, before he came back from the dead.  He would clam up tighter than anyone Jet had ever known, his face blank, unreadable, his body language giving no sign as to what was running through his head.  And Jet, of all people, should know, he  _ should,  _ he had been an ISSP officer for years, he had taken official training in the art of deciphering people’s emotions, and he had spent years with the guy to boot, and still.  Still, whenever something about his past came up, Spike became a living brick wall, letting nothing in, letting nothing out.

The change hadn’t been much, but it was there.  Words like “Syndicate” could be brought up without the tension in the room skyrocketing, talk of things before he met the doctor were met with begrudging compliance, yet compliance all the same.  He may still have been standoffish, and Jet and Faye were too used to having to tiptoe around topics, but she, of all people, was not.  She, the person who had saved him from the brink of death.  She, who had probably seen him at his worst after he had lost two former comrades in the span of hours.  She, who had stitched him up and smoothed him out and somehow managed to get him back onto the Bebop when all Jet remembered was him desperately wanting to leave.  

She was able to talk to him like it was the easiest thing in the world.  Spike exhibited an air, always had, of someone you’d be better off not approaching.  His intense gaze, large frame, confident posture, all served to drive most people away before they could muster a “hello.”  But not her.  She had matched his intensity twofold, their eyes boring into each other as she spit questions like bullets out of her mouth, and Jet had watched him twitch and squirm and give her answers, all the same.  Reluctant, often vague answers, that only left her with more questions, but in the end, it was a miracle that he answered at all.

In the end, though, as he lit a cigarette and stuck it between his teeth, he decided that it really wasn’t his problem after all.

* * *

She reminded him of Anastasia, sometimes.   _ Annie,  _ a small voice whispered in the back of his head, and the memory of her shrewd green eyes surrounded by deep lines, her mop of brown curly hair, telling him that there were only two people in the world who could call her that, almost forced a chuckle out of him.  Almost. 

It was just when she got that stubborn look in her eyes, that twist to her mouth, that he pictured Annie, shaking hands wrapped tight around a glass, dumping whiskey down her throat.  He didn’t know if Doc drank, had never thought to ask, but if she did, he had a funny feeling it would be like how Annie drank.  Spontaneous, all at once.  Dedicating each one to someone lost, glass after glass in the hopes that if she drank enough, if she said enough names, maybe she would forget a few.  

He remembered the battle at the church, the second time.  Blood spattered over Faye’s face as her captor fell dead to the ground, shots ringing through the cavernous space, the cawing of Vicious’ stupid, ugly bird.  Glass shattering, his shoulder stinging, abdomen throbbing.  Falling, falling, falling.  An explosion blowing through the stained glass, his ears ringing, his bones shattering as the shock wave rattled through him.

Two fish, shimmering in glass, swimming in an endless, fixed circle.

He wouldn’t let it happen again.

* * *

Faye didn’t know what to do.  She lay back on the living room couch, lips pursed deep in thought, watching the smoke coil against the ceiling.  This wasn’t like her.  She wished she had somewhere to run off to, a lead of some kind, something she could hop in her ship and fly away to.  But there was only Doc’s false clues, and Spike’s questionable testimony of a cargo ship headed for Earth.  

God, she wanted a drink.  

This wasn’t like her.  This wasn’t like her, at all.  Faye Valentine, lounging depressedly in a beaten-up spaceship, smoking cigarette after cigarette just to feel the burn in her lungs.  She needed to be  _ doing  _ something, except there was nothing to do except watch Spike pace the floor, flicking a lighter in his hands.  Nothing to do except watch the flame as it burst in and out of existence, nothing to do except watch Spike’s face grow darker and darker as the hours slowly reeled by, as the ship slowly reeled through space.  

Speaking of, the door to the bridge slid open, and he stepped through it, head tilted downward, obscuring his eyes with strands of his puffy hair.

“Where are you goin’?” Faye asked, voice an octave higher than usual, and he paused for a brief second, body shifting slightly towards her, but still, she could not see his eyes.  “Don’t.”  She clenched her fist, fingernails digging into her palm.  “You’ll both . . . you’ll both die.”  It was happening again.  It was happening  _ again,  _ this last stand bullshit, Spike running off somewhere without telling her why, without giving her any sufficient explanation, and she  _ hated  _ it.  

She knew what would happen, if she yelled.  If she tried, through sheer force of volume and will, to make him wait, to stay, to think things through.  He would only advance straight through her, past her trembling façade, and out the door, out of her life again.  This time, though, was different.

Doc had meant a lot to both of them.

“I know she’s there,” he said, and Faye stood, slowly.  

“I’m coming with you.”  He looked at her, finally, sidelong, but the only eye she could see was blank, devoid of any emotion that she could read.  Anger roiled in her, and she spat, “Just because she wasn’t cuddling up to me every goddamn night doesn’t mean she wasn’t important!  Doesn’t mean I don’t miss her!”  Something in his face twitched, but otherwise, he was stock still.  “Doesn’t mean she was the first female friend I had made since that weird-ass kid decided to hop on for a ride!”

He  _ snorted,  _ of all things.

“She would kill me if you died, too.”

Faye sniffed, picking her gun up off the coffee table and sticking it into the waistband of her shorts.

“Which is why I  _ won’t,  _ lughead.”

* * *

Jet did not comm, or call, or come roaring after them.  Faye watched the Bebop grow smaller in the reflection of her Red Tail’s cockpit window, and something melancholy settled in her gut.  She  _ would  _ see it again, she decided.  She would, if it was the last thing she ever did, and goddammit, Spike and Doc were going to be with her when she did.  

She followed the the flitting red shape of Spike’s Swordfish II through hyperspace and down through the remnants of the Gates to Earth, swiveling behind it as it made a jerky landing on the planet’s cratered surface.  She hopped out deftly, taking a breath of the dusty air and immediately coughing it back out.  

She had forgotten how  _ empty  _ the planet was.  Her fleeting memories of her time here, in 2014, before everything, before it all, were only of greenery, of tall buildings, of paved roads and shiny cars and people filling the streets, talking and smiling and laughing.  Now, now it was empty, brown scarred terrain stretching as far as the eye could see.  What little buildings remained had been blasted nearly to bits by meteor showers, and there was no sign of life for miles, according to her ship’s scanners.

“I can’t believe this,” she sighed, striding up to Spike with her hands on her hips.  “We don’t even have any idea where to look.”

“The shipment deployed near here,” he answered immediately, tapping away on some scanner he had fished from his pocket.  “There should be a shelter, a hovel . . . something.  Someone came to receive this cargo, and if they had any brains at all they found shelter before the next meteor shower . . . .”

“And that’s where we find our rogue doctor,” Faye completed, refusing to feel impressed at how thoroughly he had conducted his search.  Guilt twinged in her gut.  This son of a bitch was going to be harder to shake than either she or Doc had anticipated, but looking at him now, brow furrowed, device beeping faintly in his hands, she just wanted to apologize, and keep apologizing, even though it couldn’t possibly be enough.

“There,” he said, voice belying none of the triumph it should have felt.  As she stepped closer to peer at the screen he tilted toward her, she took careful note of how tense he was, of how his fingers were shaking, however imperceptibly.  “There’s two pockets, beneath the soil.  Both about two and a half miles away from here.  Hovels, shelters, or something.  Nothing natural can be that large, and deliberate.  Whatever, whoever lives there – they’ll have our answers.”

He began to stride off in one direction, long legs covering so much ground in such a short period of time that Faye had to jog to catch up with him.

“Hey, hold up –” she called, but he stopped so suddenly that she almost crashed right into him.

“No.”  He turned his gaze on her, and still,  _ still,  _ she could not read his face.  “You go that way.  Check out the other one.”

“You’re  _ crazy  _  if you think I’m letting you go off on your own,” Faye snapped, crossing her arms in front of her.  “The second I turn my back and you’ll be Geronimo-ing off into some gunfight.”

“We need to split up,” was all he said, turning his back to her.  “It’s less efficient if we check out both hideouts one at a time.  And I know you can handle yourself.  Am I wrong?”  He turned slightly, face still partially obscured.  She twitched.

“ _ Fine,”  _ she barked, spinning on her heel and trudging in the opposite direction.  “But if I have to be the one who tells her that you went and got yourself killed on  _ my  _ watch, I will bring you back from the grave and kill you again myself.”

He only grunted, and continued on his way, his back already beginning to recede amidst the roiling heat waves curling off of the scorched ground.  

Faye sniffed, and continued on her way, hands tight around her pistol.

She hoped to God she got to Doc first.

* * *

“So, tell, tell!” Ed cried, rolling in an excited circle, knees clutched to her chest.  “Tell us!  How are they?  Are they all good?  Are they all alive?”

“So far as I know,” you replied, the last question sending a twang through you that you chose to stalwartly ignore.  “Jet’s as grumpy as ever, Faye’s tough but kind, and Spike . . . he’s good too, I guess.”  You punctuated the last bit with a smile, to hide how hard you were trying not to think about it.

“Do they miss us?” Ed asked, rolling to a stop and crossing her legs.  “Do they talk about us a lot?”

“Faye’s mentioned you a few times.  We’ve been . . . busy, though, so we don’t really get the chance to talk much.”

Ed made a disappointed nose, rolling away, and Ein followed her, tongue lolling out of his mouth, tail steadily wagging as he watched his owner somersault her way around the room.  

Siniz was still staring you, gaze shrewd.  “The irony of this sure as hell isn’t lost on me,” he grumbled, and you sent a shaky grin in his direction.  It was certainly not lost on you, either, judging by how earnestly your stomach was doing cartwheels.  

“Who would’a thought,” you said, watching as Ed came crashing to a stop against one wall, upside down, legs kicking towards the ceiling.  “I manage to end up in the home of someone else who rode around on that goddamn ship.”

“Which begs the question . . .” Siniz stared hard into your eyes, and you gulped.  “Why did you leave?”

“To . . .,” you started, then stopped.  You considered, for a moment, on just how to explain this to him.  That you fell head over heels for a guy who had the love of his life die in his arms, that you were being pursued by the Syndicate that had experimented on you for most of your life that said guy was also conveniently connected to, that you were worried they would use him against you so you left to make sure that no one else close to you had to die?  “To protect someone.”  You stared hard back, gaze unflinching, and he surveyed you up and down.

“Well, you could have just said so in the first place,” he sighed, and the relief that swept over you was overwhelming.  “A man doesn’t question what someone else wants to protect.”

“Of all the things I thought I’d find on Earth, this . . .,” you said, watching as Ed swung into a sitting position, tugging Ein into her lap and hugging him fiercely, “. . . wasn’t it.  Thank you.”  You looked back at Siniz, smiling.  “Really.”

“Hey, don’t be thanking me.  I didn’t choose to have you shipped here in a box of my potatoes.”

You laughed, and a thud sounded from above.  Dust trickled from the ceiling, and Siniz looked up curiously.  “Visitors.  Friends of yours?”  He raised his eyebrows, and a dumb, idiotic hope took root in your chest, along with an ice-cold rock of absolute dread.  

“You know, I was really hoping that it would take at  _ least  _ a day before they managed to track me down,” you sighed, rising from the ground and dusting dirt off of yourself.  Ed was sitting up, still clutching Ein, all attention attuned to the footsteps now sounding, one after the other, from above her head.  “There wouldn’t happen to be a back door to this place, would there?”

Siniz shook his head, every muscle in his body taut as the footsteps approached the metal front door, and paused.  “In hindsight, a major design flaw,” he said, his voice low.  “But see if you can fit yourself into the wardrobe in the bedroom.”  He jerked his head backwards, to a dilapidated brown curtain that sectioned off another part of the home.  “I’ll see if I can keep them occupied.  Françoise should be enough to do that on her own, though.”

You nodded, and the two-inch thick steel door was sent flying into the room with what sounded like a small explosion.

“Ed – get down – !”

“Françoise – !”

The scalpel was in your hand, at the ready, and all of a sudden it seemed small, too small, for the rush of black figures spilling into the hovel, black armor glinting dully in the yellow halogen lights.  Siniz had already knocked two out with sheer fists alone, yelling something indecipherable, and you charged at the first soldier your gaze landed on.

You swept him off his feet with one leg, tore the gun from his hands, and bashed the butt of it into his face.  He lay still, and you swung the weapon wildly, managing to hit someone else, but there was a hand on your arm, gripping, vice-like, and you tore away with a snarl, jabbing your scalpel forward and feeling it sink into flesh.  You whirled around again, brandishing both of your newly acquired weapons, but there were too many of them, and you had never shot a gun before, and certainly couldn’t be expected to fire the semi-automatic weapon clutched in your hand without hurting Siniz, Ed, and yourself.  

There were just too  _ many,  _ too many of them rushing into the small hovel, jostling for space, armor clinking, voices rising, guns and eyes trained onto yours, and you dove into the mass, determined, above all else, to get out, to draw them away, to kill all of them, systematically, one by one, before they could hurt anyone else.

You rushed forward, scalpel flashing, gun swinging, and their faces all lined up in your vision and started to swim but you  _ had  _ to keep moving, you had to, you had to, you had to get out –

* * *

He came over a rise, and smoke was rising in the distance, acrid black clouds curling into the pale blue sky.

He started to run.  Plan forgotten, he wrenched his Jericho from his waistband and ran, eyes scanning the area for vehicles, ships, people, bodies,  _ anything,  _ and as he drew closer all he could hear was horrible, horrible silence.

He entered the smoking remains of what once must have been a hovel, and stiffened at the black-armored bodies strewn about the room.  He coughed, covering his mouth with his hand, and scanned his surroundings, looking, looking for something familiar, anything, anything at all that would clue him in as to whether one of the bodies was her.  

He didn’t notice the figure behind him.

He whipped around, gun at the ready, but a muzzle was already descending, a fist swinging, eyes glinting with a cold, silver light –

* * *

You knocked another one out, another, but as you turned, scalpel at the ready, eyes wild, you saw it, descending, muzzle glimmering, and you could hear the finger on the trigger tightening –

* * *

A gunshot, and then blackness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aahh it is good to be back............. i was putting off rewatching the series to avoid causing myself pain, but then i realized that a) i've been neglecting pretty much the entire tone of the series and b) i have been writing spike so.......so........wrong......it actually causes physical pain to go back and read how i characterized him. yikes. but from now on i'm hoping that it'll be smooth sailing so!!! fingers crossed
> 
> also: i really liked writing this chapter, all the different povs and just......it's one of my favorites that i've written so far
> 
> also also: a few obscure references in this chapter, one to a character who i think only appears in episode 5, and if you get the "two swimming fish encased in glass" reference then like 3 million brownie points to you bro you've earned it


	10. You're Gonna Carry That Weight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you are at all sensitive to descriptions of violence/torture of any sort, then i'd recommend skipping past the section that starts with "I tried to be nice, you know." 
> 
> enjoy

You woke up much the same way you supposed he had, in an inordinate amount of pain and with no idea where you were.  The smell that filtered through your nose was familiar in a way that it shouldn’t have been, and the way the surface you were lying on scratched stiffly against your arms should not have been as gut-wrenchingly nostalgic as it was.  The light above you was harsh and bright, you could tell that without even being fully conscious, and if you had any energy at all you would have screwed up your face and turned away from it.  As it was, you only managed a pathetic flop of your head to one side, and hospital linen scuffed against your cheek.

Your eyes fluttered open, stickier than they should have been, and Heimlen was staring down at you.

You screamed, and did not have the capacity to be ashamed.

He did not even flinch, creepy smile instead growing wider and creepier, and as your whole body jerked in a spastic flight response, the restraints around your arms and legs dug into you, bringing you forcibly back down onto the scratchy white linen.  The gravity of the situation hit you like a boulder to the chest, and you could only manage a thin stream of air through your lips as Heimlen circled you, smile still stretched across his face.

“Lovely to have you here again,” he said, voice almost visibly dripping with sleaze, and you jerked again, teeth gnashing, brain smoothly flowing from flight to fight in a matter of seconds.  The restraints tightened around you and you only pulled harder, jaw clacking as you lunged at his face, teeth bared, and he swung out of view with a laugh, voice circling away as he almost sang, “I believe we’re going to require some cranial restraints.”

“Bastard!” you choked out as a thick heavy strap descended over your forehead, trapping your neck at a bad angle as the operating table’s machinery whirred and clicked.  “ _Bastard!”_ As you screamed your lungs burned with the effort, a scratchy ache deep in your chest that felt as if you had just swallowed sandpaper.  

“Oh, come, now, don’t make me gag you, as well,” he sighed, slowly striding back into view, and you snarled, teeth bared.  “I simply _must_ hear about your time away from us.  Has it been fun?  Did you make some new friends?  I seem to remember you not having many.”

The images of Sam and Spike’s faces crossed simultaneously through your mind, and you grappled momentarily with the feeling of intense anger and crippling fear.  You hoped that your facial expression had not changed, but judging by the pleased look on his face, it most certainly had.  A cold weight settled in your stomach.

“Bastard . . .,” you whispered, and he chuckled.  

“Quite eloquent today, aren’t we?  I suppose I’ll have to be content with the answer that I already know to be true.  I just wanted to hear it from your own lips, is all.  Then, perhaps, I could use it in some way.  Well, it’s no matter.”  He leaned closer to you, eyes glinting, and your whole body started to tremble despite your fervent efforts to stop it.  “Samantha was very pretty, wasn’t she?  It’s too bad her only use was to patch up people who she had no right to patch up.  Mr. Spiegel, however . . .”  He straightened and walked out of view again, his shoes clicking on the linoleum floor.  “He has something . . . quite valuable.  Not that he even knows it, I don’t think.  Regardless,” he towered over you now, blocking the bright overhead light, peering down at you, and you could see your bloody, emaciated face reflected in his glasses, “you, too, have something we very much want.”

“Don’t touch him,” you growled.  “Don’t you dare . . . don’t you _dare_ touch him.”

“Well, I think it’s far too late for that, my dear.”  The term of endearment made your stomach roil, and if there had been anything left inside it you were sure that it would have been paying a visit to the back of your throat by now.  “We figured, since the two of you had become so . . . how to put it . . . _well-acquainted_ , we would just, well . . . kill two birds with one stone, as the saying goes.  Though I have to say our methods were far more elegant than just throwing stones.”

Desperation, now.  The thought that all of you was not a sufficient enough bargaining chip anymore clutched at you with stone-cold fingers.  Spike had something, now.  Something they wanted, something they would do anything to get.  And it was gone.  Your trump card, the ace up your sleeve, the will to sacrifice yourself so they would spare him.  In the space of a few seconds, it had been rendered absolutely moot.

There really was nothing you could do, now.

“Don’t . . .,” was all you could muster, the little energy keeping you conscious rapidly fading away.  “Me . . . take me . . .”

Heimlen laughed, of all things, a decidedly uncivil guffaw erupting from his mouth.  “You know that’s no use, don’t you?  We’ll be taking what we want from both of you, regardless of protest.  Although, I have to say, when we’re done with him, he may still be able to walk away.  Short a body part, of course, but all the same, I am positive that the same cannot be said for you.  When we are done taking back what is ours . . . why, I’m not sure there’ll be anything left to bury, even.”

It should have scared you.  Really, it should have.  It should have filled you with indescribable, catatonic terror, the kind that sweeps up through your throat and traps your brain in a cold freeze, unable to process any sort of thought or course of action to take.  As it was, you were intensely, intensely relieved.  Even after all was said and done, he would still be alive.  He would still be breathing.  He would still be able to remember you.

Now it was your turn to laugh.  It was more of a gurgly chuckle, actually, but Heimlen started, blinking confusedly.  “That’s fine,” you breathed, your eyes fluttering shut.  “That’s totally . . . totally fine.  Why don’t you just . . . get on with it, then.  While I’m so . . . conveniently . . . asleep. . . .”

Consciousness left you, and it was good that it had, because you did not have to see the uncontrollable glee in Heimlen’s eyes.  

* * *

Spike knew nothing.  Saw nothing.  Felt nothing.  All that he knew, all that he saw, all that he felt, all that he was, was blackness.  It should have been comforting.  Like falling asleep, or waking in a comfortably dark room.  It would have comforted him, long ago.  It would have made him sigh, would have made him sink deeper down.  Would have made him happy, that everything was finally over.

Now, however.  He saw her face.  His eyes flew open.

The room was very, very dark.  Whatever he was lying on was very, very cold.  His body was very, very heavy.  He thought of her face again.  His heart was beating very, very fast.

He tried to sit up, found that he could not.  Black straps were tight over his chest, his thighs, his ankles.  His hands were trapped along with his thighs, just above the wrist. He craned his head up, squinting, trying to get a feel for the room.  Looked for something he could use to escape.  

All he saw was blackness, and the faint outline of light spilling through the cracks around a door.  There were voices outside.

“Orders are orders.  We can’t start yet.  Not until he says.”

“ _Not until he says . . ._ who does he think he is, anyways?  He acts like he earned this position, instead of swiping it out from under Vicious’ dead body.”

He knew that name.  Remembered that name.  White skin, whiter hair, a large, ugly, red-eyed bird, a long, silver sword, a gunshot, blood, pain.  Yes.  He knew that name.  He knew it very, very well.

“Don’t say those kinda things so loud, idiot,” the first voice hissed.  “It doesn’t matter how he got it, he’s still the head, and we have to do what he says.”

“It doesn’t make any _sense,_ though,” the second voice insisted, and the sound of latex peeling and snapping off of skin filtered through Spike’s faintly ringing ears.  “There isn’t any logical reason why we have to wait for some cue from her to commence with his procedure.”

“I know, I know, but you have to bear with it.  This is just another one of his games.”

“Yeah, well, his weird mind games are messing with my work schedule.  Call me when we can actually get started with this.  I have other things to do.”

Footsteps, clicking away.  A sigh, the rustle of cloth.  More footsteps, clicking away in the opposite direction.  Silence.

One word from that conversation stuck with him, turning round and round in his head like a rotisserie.   _Her.  A cue from her._ His eyes fluttered, focused.  He was able to make out the tiles of the ceiling, now.  He struggled harder against his bindings, and some mechanism beneath him whirred.  They tightened, slightly.  He grimaced.

_Ah.  So it’s one of those._

He craned his head from side to side, searching.  He squinted.  In the fuzzy darkness, only a few feet away, was a table.  Metal somethings glinted in the light from outside the door.  He jerked his whole body towards it, blindly.  The table scraped across the floor a few inches, the sound ringing in his ears.  The straps tightened.  

He stopped, listened.  No sound from outside, no indication that anyone had heard.  He did it again.  The whole table shook, slid across the floor, almost tipped over.  The metal somethings were glinting closer now.  Sharply glinting.

The straps tightened.

Dull pain, now, somewhere in the back of his skull.  

His fingers reached out, brushing the edge of the table.  Not enough.

He jerked, hand reaching, fingers scrabbling.  They closed around something thin, cold, metal.  A sharp prick of pain in the crook of his ring finger.  Something sharp.

The straps tightened.  It was getting hard to breathe.

He maneuvered the sharp thing around, over in his hand.  Towards the strap against his thigh.  He flexed his wrist, sawing the sharp thing back and forth against the material.  He heard a few threads snap.  He snorted, the action earning him a bolt of pain against the strap over his chest.  So they _were_ still stupid enough to use cloth.

He continued to flex, continued to saw.  The tendons in his hand were burning, screeching in agony, and yet he did not slow.  He took careful, measured breaths against the strap over his chest.  He could not move again, or it would surely break a rib.  Puncture a lung.  Suffocate him.

That couldn’t happen.  Not until he found her.

A final saw, a final snap, the rush of blood back to the upper half of his legs.  The sharp, prickling sensation of the nerves rekindling.  

He did not have time to feel triumphant.  Flexing his arm experimentally, he moved on to his chest.  Sawing, sawing, sawing.  His fingers were starting to grow numb.  He was starting to grow agitated.  The speed of his breathing increased, the intensity of his pain increased.  The strap broke free, and he gasped in a lungful of air.

He lay there for a moment, panting.  His hand was horribly sore.  There was still no sound from outside his dark room.

He sat up, and the dark shapes he had just begun to make out from the surrounding blackness spun.  He grit his teeth.  Screwed his eyes shut.  Opened them again.  The room had stilled, and he set to work, on his last strap.

As he worked, eyes straining, he began to get a better view of the sharp metal something in his hand, as he vigorously sawed it back and forth against the cloth strap encasing his legs.

It was a scalpel.  

He remembered her, clutching it, lunging.  Remembered her slamming it into a Syndicate soldier’s head, remembered her pressing the blade to another’s throat.  Remembered her slipping it up her sleeve, a tiny, deadly weapon.  

The last strap broke free, and he slid the scalpel up his sleeve.  The metal was cool against his skin.  A comfort, almost.

He swung his legs over the side of the operating table.  Waited for the feeling to return to his feet.  He stood, slowly, hands gripping the side of the table.  When he was up, fully, he stumbled for a moment, vision flickering, but he soon regained it with a shake of his head and a grind of his jaw.  

He looked to the door, the light spilling in around it.  He thought of her.

He walked to the door, pulled it open, blinked at the bright light.  He took a moment to adjust, for the pain in his retinas to subside.  He stepped out into the hallway, looking from left to right.  Long, white, linoleum-tiled, lined with doors identical to his.  There was no sound.

He stepped forward, the click of his shoes echoing.

The scalpel was cold against his skin.

* * *

You didn’t know if the state you were in technically counted as unconsciousness, to be truthful.  You could not move your arms or legs, you could barely manage anything other than a flutter of your eyelashes.  And yet, you felt everything.  Albeit, numbly, but you felt the prick of the scalpels, the pinch of the forceps, the rough plastic of the tubes shoved into your veins.  

You didn’t know where Heimlen was, didn’t want to know.  You were sprawled on your stomach, chest digging into the hard metal of the table, and you felt the skin of your back being peeled off, pulled away, bit by bit.  You wondered, briefly, if they were going to rip out your ribs, one by one.

You still didn’t know what secret they sought in your sinew and muscles, and you didn’t think you would get the opportunity to ask.

Muffled voices filtered in from above, twisting and distorted in your semi-drugged state, and you strained your ears to catch, “He managed to escape, sir.”

“Really, now?” The scalpels paused in their pricking, slicing assault, and you would have sighed if you weren’t afraid of how much it would hurt.  “Well, I don’t know what you’re standing around here for, then.   _Capture him.”_

“Y-Yes, sir.”

Quick, scurrying footsteps, fading to fuzzy silence.  The light in front of your eyes darkened, and you fluttered your lashes to see Heimlen’s face hovering in front of yours, small, beady eyes searching your expression.  “Did you hear that?  It seems as if your knight in shining armor’s come to rescue you.”

You actually laughed at that, and regretted it.  It felt like something had burst, somewhere deep down, but you ignored it.  “As . . .,” you breathed, tongue darting out to wet your cracked lips, “as if . . . .  He’s terrible . . . at rescue missions . . .”

“As I suspected,” Heimlen sighed, straightening up and picking up a scalpel from a side table.  “I suppose we’d best get back to work, then.”

“What . . .,” you groaned, and as you breathed the skin on your back tugged in ways that it shouldn’t have.  “What . . . what do you want?  From . . . from me . . .?”

Heimlen stared at you curiously, and beneath the surgeon’s mask covering his face you could see him working his jaw thoughtfully.  Finally, he sighed, and placed the scalpel back down onto the side table, the clattering of the metal ringing strangely in your ears.  “I suppose I could tell you.  Since you’re going to die, anyways.”

“How . . . kind of you.”

He snickered.  “Still retaining that wonderfully sharp wit, I see.

"Well, it may be a bit – difficult – for you to understand –" You scoffed, and it hurt, but the irritated expression on his face made it worth it.  "As I was saying . . . you were the second attempt at encoding information in human cells." Your brain pondered that information carefully, turning slowly.   _The second._ "The first attempt, ironically enough, was Mr. Spiegel's right eye."  You started at that, flopping your head over to stare at him, gaze flicking over the the lines in his face, the indecipherable look in his eyes,

"He lost that eye ... in an accident," you breathed, brow furrowing at the memory, and Heimlen only laughed.

"He did, yes.  The replacement, however, was no accident at all.  Mao Yenrai insisted that he could still be of use, and we complied, as long as he served some use to us.  We encoded some valuable information into that eye's synthetic cells, with . . . mixed results.  Some of the information may be lost, however, considering the less than desirable circumstances the subject has found himself in since the surgery. . . .  But no matter.  The information is ours now.

"As for you . . .," he paused, eyes glinting, and it sent a chill through you.  "You have been the most successful case of inter-cellular information integration in the entire history of mankind."  

You whistled low, and he glanced at you strangely.  "Well, how about that."  You shot him a toothy grin.  "I'll have to write home to Mom and Dad about that one."

Heimlen snorted, adjusting his glasses haughtily.  "As I was saying . . . you have some very, _very_ valuable information hidden in the depths of your DNA, and, as you may have already assumed, we would very much like it back.  Which is why we've been tirelessly searching for you all these long, long years after Samantha's death."

That stuttered an honest-to-god laugh out of you, one that burned like fire in your chest, but it was nothing compared to the pure spiteful mirth singing in your veins. You glanced over to Heimlen, chuckles still bubbling from your throat, and managed to say, "You idiots – you absolute – fucking – idiots – I was here – I was here the whole time!"

"What are you talking about?" Heimlen asked, voice dangerously soft, eyes obscured by the glare reflecting off of his glasses, and you only laughed harder.

"I was on Mars!  The whole time!  In some rundown slum a few blocks down from the old Syndicate headquarters that Spike shot up, I can't believe that you –"

The rest of your sentence was cut off by a gurgling scream as something cold and sharp dug itself into the open skin of your back, twisting mercilessly in your flesh.  Blood squelched from the wound and you writhed uselessly against your restraints, Heimlen's hand driving deeper and deeper, teeth grinding in his jaw.

"How humorous," he said, voice soft and even, betraying no shift in demeanor.  "How very –," the knife twisted deeper, and white spots burst behind your screwed-up eyelids, "– _very_ –," the pain was becoming unbearable, your consciousness slipping, fluttering away like a cloth in a storm, and you grasped for it, desperately, fingers clawing against the table beneath you in a frantic bid to stay awake, "– humorous."

He wrenched the blade from your skin, and all of the breath flew from your lungs.

And then, it was only blackness, and the words, "Patch her up.  I don't want any of that information lost, you hear me?   _Any_ of it."

* * *

They were gone.  Both of them, fucking _both_ of them, had up and disappeared on _her_ watch.  Oh, she was never going to hear the end of this.  

She was standing on her tiptoes, in the middle of nowhere, waving her comm in the air in a desperate attempt to get something in the bare vicinity of a signal.  She had been trying to call Jet for hours, trying to get him to come pick her up from this deserted hellhole.  

All she was getting, however, was static, and she wasn't sure if the signal was being jammed, or he just wasn't answering her.

Growling in frustration, she stuffed the comm back in her pocket and began pacing in frantic circles, arms crossed in front of her chest.  The hot air was stale in her throat and she coughed, glancing from horizon to horizon and being greeted with absolutely nothing in return.

Her jaw ground, and she set off towards her ship, shimmering amidst the heat waves rising off the ground.  

It wouldn't do her any good to pace around until Jet called her.  It wouldn't do her any good to wait until Spike and Doc miraculously reappeared.  It wouldn't do her any good to float mindlessly through the endless abyss of space, waiting for her next ride.

She would find them, she decided.  She would find them, and she would bring them home.

* * *

“I tried to be nice, you know.”  Another layer of skin, peeled back.  The machine above you, metal pincers holding the strip of flesh in place, gears whirring.  A gust of air where it should never, ever be.  “I tried to be civil.”  Forceps, pinching at the sensitive tissue, grasping a sample and none-too-gently ripping it out.  You stifled a pained whimper.  “I tried to get you to talk.  And what do you do?”  A tiny pair of tweezers, grasping at the next layer, the scalpel sliding underneath.  “You _insult_ me.  You _insult_ my intelligence.  Now how is that for manners?  You’re a guest here, you know.  Since you’ve so violated my hospitality, I guess I’ll just have to remove every single piece of information in your body . . . one by one.  How does that sound?”  You opened your mouth to make a sarcastic reply, licking your lips and tasting the acrid sweat dripping down your face, but before you could draw breath he was brutally driving the forceps into your flesh.  All that emerged from your mouth was a quiet, gurgly moan, and you felt him lean closer to you.  “Hmm?  What was that?  Didn’t quite catch it.”  He twisted the forceps, harder this time, and you sucked in a sharp breath, a high, keening whine spilling from the back of your throat.  “Really, darling –” His breath was suddenly hot against your ear, the stench coiling into your nose, and you felt bile rise in your throat.  “– you’re going to have to speak up.”

You felt the forceps twitch, preparing to drive deeper, strike a bone, an organ, anything to make you scream, but the door burst open, and your hazy vision flicked over to see one of the bodyguards standing there, panting heavily.  

“Sir!  Sir, he’s – !” the bodyguard panted, and Heimlen drew himself up with a sigh.

“I’ve _told_ you brutes a thousand times to never, _ever_ interrupt my work under any circumstances –”

“Spiegel.  He’s gone.”

Silence.  Awful, awful silence.  You felt the machine above you holding the layers of your skin away from your back slowly start to lay your skin back over you, taking Heimlen’s inaction as a sign that the procedure was over.  Its molecular bonding rays tickled over your flesh as it basically stitched your skin back onto you, gears clicking quietly as it closed you back up again.  It felt foreign, wrong, like someone was trying to wrap you up in cracked leather.  

“Well,” Heimlen breathed, quietly, oh so quietly.  “I guess we’ll have to throw our little get-together a tad earlier than originally planned.  You’re in luck, darling.”  You heard his voice turn back to you, his quiet footsteps draw closer.  “We get to go for a little walk.”

He didn’t even allow the machine to finish before he was ripping the restraints off of you, clamping his hand around your arm to haul you off of the table.  You landed clumsily, in a collapsed heap, limbs unable to respond to the signals your brain was sending them.  Heimlen tsked, and called for the guards.  Two of them grabbed a bicep each and hauled you, legs dragging on the floor, out of the room.

At some point down the hallway the feeling started to return to your feet, in the form of white-hot needle pricks stabbing into you, and you struggled to stand upright to get the blood flowing back into them.  The guards only yanked you harder, and you were resorted to a sort of stumbling, sliding walk, your feet gaining purchase under you and then quickly being swept back out again by the force with which you were being dragged.

The hallways did not feel familiar, not in the slightest, and yet they felt . . . wrong.  The air was thick, and wasn’t so much heavy with the scent of death as laden with it, the stench woven into the tiles under your feet, pressed into the wallpaper passing by your head.  It smelled of death and formaldehyde, and quite honestly, you had long ago ceased to recognize a difference between the two.

The guards on either side of you paused, and you looked up to see a set of hospital double doors swing open, leading out into a cavernous room that looked more like it belonged in a church than a Syndicate hospital.  It was encased entirely in stone, and looked decidedly unfinished.  Skinny rectangular windows were placed high up above, letting in light from all directions and casting odd shadows on the room’s floor.  The air was cold, and damp, the smell of wet stone heavy in the back of your throat.

The doors had led out onto a high stone platform, rising twenty or so feet off the ground, with several other platforms rising around the room.  You glanced down at the floor below, and immediately regretted it.  The faint lines of the tile floor swam before your eyes as your head spun, and you quickly wrenched your eyes back to Heimlen’s back in front of you.  Which, granted, was not much of an improvement, comfort-wise.

“The guest of honor will be here shortly,” Heimlen said, softly, and at a snap of his fingers the guards released you.  You crumpled into a heap on the ground, but before you could regain your footing Heimlen had you by the hair, fingernails digging into your scalp as he wrenched you in front of him.  

You snarled, prepared to lunge for his face, but something cold and hard pressed into the small of your back, and you froze.  “. . . Bastard.”

“Quite perceptive, aren’t we?” he said, pressing the muzzle of the gun harder into your back, and you reluctantly complied with his movements.  “Stay still, now.  I won’t hesitate to shoot.  Cells can take up to 24 hours to die, you know.  Which means I can still get what I want out of you, even if I have to shoot you first.”

Your teeth ground in your jaw, feet slipping on the floor as you tried to remain somewhat upright.  The sound echoed in the cavernous room, and you felt your heart beating wildly in your ears.  Even after everything that you had gone through, everything that had happened within the last 24 hours, standing in an empty room with Heimlen’s sweaty fingers coiled in your hair was what finally set panic mode kicking.  Sweat was starting to trickle down your back, your neck, pooling in the dips in your spine and the curve of your collarbone.

Footsteps echoed from down below.  You heard the harsh grating of a door opening.  

Heimlen pushed your head down so you could see below you, and you hissed at the pain in your scalp.  You and Spike locked eyes.  

“Spike,” you whispered, voice cracked, and you watched from far away as his eyes scanned over your face, your body, your hands clenched into fists at your sides, Heimlen’s hand tangled at the back of your head.

“Mr. Spiegel!” Heimlen crowed.  “It seems you’ve finally arrived.  I’ve been preparing this for a long time, you know.  Surely, you . . . recognize this place?”

“It’s a good imitation, if that’s what you mean,” Spike said, voice reverberating into your ears, and you gulped.  “Didn’t realize you were _this_ obsessed with Vicious, honestly.”

“He was . . .,” Heimlen breathed, and you heard the sound of him licking his lips.  Disgust coiled in your stomach, and you resisted the urge to twist against his grip.  “He was . . . legendary.  A visionary of his time.  That fateful day . . . when he murdered the Syndicate heads . . . and ushered _me_ into power . . . I’ll never forget it.”

“You always did have a flair for the dramatic,” you spat, unable to control yourself, and Heimlen wrenched your head back, eliciting a sharp cry.  You heard Spike start forward a few steps, then stop.  You could almost see his hands tensing, reaching for a gun he didn’t have.  

“Ah ah ah, Mr. Spiegel,” Heimlen sang, removing the gun from your back and waving it in the air.  “I have the gun, you see.  Now, if we may continue . . .”  The gun returned to the small of your back, but your head did not return forward.  Heimlen’s hands were tight in your hair, so tight you felt strands popping out every time you shifted, and your neck was beginning to strain.  All you could see was the cold stone grey of the ceiling above you, all you could hear was Heimlen’s labored breathing, Spike’s shifting body.  “What I want from you is really quite simple.  I want you to surrender.  I had this whole game planned out, see, where I captured both of you, put you in a room together, and see how much pain I could inflict on one of you until the other achieved total psychological collapse.  Quite fun, don’t you think?  It really would have added some helpful data points for my research.  But then, you just had to . . .,” Heimlen paused, sighing, “escape.  And that ruined everything, you see?  And so, I had to come up with this – rather last minute, I’ll have you know – to get you to surrender of your own free will.

“Because it’s no fun if you don’t do it willingly, you understand?  I enjoy the satisfaction of watching people submit before me, of their own volition.  But, the game I designed remains the same.”  The gun pressed harder into your back, the grip on your hair tightened, this time throwing your head forward so you could do nothing but stare down at Spike, who looked ghastly pale, yet simultaneously unspeakably angry.  “I enjoy watching the beast lose his fangs.  Better yet, to pull the fangs from his skull myself,” Heimlen continued, and a gleeful chuckle sputtered from his lips.  

You knew what you had to do.  You flicked your eyes from side to side, estimating the width of the podium, the height, the velocity it would take to send a man Heimlen’s size over the edge with only one hit.  Spike saw your eyes roving, and his narrowed.  You saw him shake his sleeve, saw something slide into his hand.  You saw metal, glinting in the light from above.  Orange light pierced your eyes.  The sun was setting.  You almost laughed, if the sound hadn’t been trapped in how tightly your chin was pressed to your chest.  He would never hit him.  Not from that distance.

“If you think you’ll hurt her –,” Spike began, and you could almost hear Heimlen’s grin stretching from ear to ear.

“Oh, I do very much think that I will, if you don’t mind me saying so.  Any last words, Doctor, dear?  For I don’t think screams count much towards what one would qualify as last words, do you?”

You allowed yourself a chuckle.  You looked down at Spike, and smiled, softly.  

“I’m sorry, space cowboy.”

He opened his mouth, but all of a sudden blood was roaring in your ears, and you could no longer hear.

Faster than you thought you could, your hands were grasping at Heimlen, yanking his hand from your hair, wrenching the gun away from your back, nails digging into his skin.  His arm came around your neck, attempting to restrain you, but you sank your teeth into his flesh and tore.  Warm blood gushed between your teeth, Heimlen was screaming, and you spit the bloody mess of skin and tissue out of your mouth.  Your leg swept out as you half spun backwards, tugging his arms simultaneously, and he was wrenched to the side, stumbling towards the edge of the stone platform.

You saw Heimlen’s face as he was about to topple over the edge.  You saw his eyes, the unbridled rage and hatred and murderous intent searing into your skin.  You saw his hand, flailing, grasping for you.  The other one, the gun, was pointed straight at you.

Pain blossomed in your abdomen, a dull throb, like a particularly bad stomachache after Faye’s turn to make dinner, or after a particularly forceful kick to the ribs.  Spike was yelling.  You felt air rushing by you.  You didn’t feel anything beneath your feet.

Oh.

_Oh._

* * *

You saw the Bebop, bobbing in the waves off the dock.  You saw Jet and Faye in the distance, standing at the loading dock, beckoning to Spike and eyeing your tattered appearance up and down.  

You saw Spike, in the center.  He was clearer than everything else, like a picture with only one aspect in focus.  The bandages around his abdomen were fresh, one arm cradling them, the other tucked into the pocket of his jacket.  His eyes were boring into you, and you could do nothing but stare back.  Gradually, the dock, the Bebop, Jet, and Faye, they all started to melt away, leaving only Spike, his unruly dark hair, his ever-present tobacco stench, the bandages around his waist, the blood crusted under his nails.  The startling brilliance of his eyes.

Words rose, unbidden, to your throat, and you almost choked on the familiarity of them.

“See you, space cowboy.”

* * *

The next scene that formed before you was older.  

A small kitchen.  Green-tinted light pouring in through the window, turning the room a soft shade of chartreuse.  A kettle, whistling softly on the stove.  You could hear the flames crackling.  You could smell the blood.

Sam was there, blood up to her elbows, hair pulled up into a tight knot at the back of her head.  Strands had begun to escape, stuck fast to the nape of her neck as she sweat.  You heard her sigh, and she turned to look at you.  The room melted away again, and all you knew was her face, her smile, her soft, soft voice.  You remembered how rough her hands had felt, and how much it had surprised you.  You remembered the warm mugs of tea.  You remembered the patient, dead of infection, in the next room over.

For a brief second, Spike, comatose in the Bebop’s living room, brow slick with sweat, breath coming in rapid pants.  The swollen incision, what you knew had been coming and still weren’t ready for.

Sam, again, breath soft against your skin.

“Easy come, easy go.”

* * *

_Do you have a comrade?_

Of course.  Of course, of course, of course.  You didn’t know how you ever could have forgotten.

Blood was trickling out of your mouth.  Oh.  That’s right.  You had bitten him.  Torn the flesh right from his arm.  Nothing to worry about, then.  At least you had paid the bastard back.

The pain was growing worse, now.  The feeling of falling was starting to get to you.

You hoped it would be over soon.

* * *

_You shouldn’t wake the sleeping beast._

And why ever not?  He couldn’t sleep forever.  He couldn’t deny the world forever.  His fangs were long, and they were sharp, and they had bitten so many, yet they did not scare you.  You did not know what else could hurt you, and if it could, whether you would even feel it.

* * *

_Life is but a dream, you know?_

It isn’t.  No no no no _no,_ it is _not,_  he has to wake up, he can’t sleep forever, _you_ can’t sleep forever, not with Jet and Faye and Ed and the Bebop and the ever-lingering presence of Julia weighing heavily on your back –

If it was a dream, you wanted to wake up.

Faint yelling filtered into your ears.

* * *

_See you, Space Samurai._

Now that was something you did not want to remember.  The casino, the gunfight, the blood on the red dress.  The smoke curling against the bathroom ceiling.  The washing machine chugging along, water sloshing and swirling as it thumped dully against the walls on either side of it.  The rock in your stomach, the ice in your chest, the sinking feeling that you needed to leave.

* * *

_Are you living in the real world?_

Perhaps.  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, if the pain in your stomach was anything to go by.  It really was starting to hurt a lot.

If this was the real world, why was it taking so long for it to stop?

* * *

_See you cowgirl, someday, somewhere!_

Ed had been so kind.  So nice.  So bouncy.  Her father’s eyes had been so green.  

You hoped you would see her again.  You wanted to.  You _needed_ to.  You needed to know that she was safe.  You needed to know that the Syndicate hadn’t gotten to her, too.  You needed to know if Siniz had gotten all of those potatoes washed and chopped, you needed to know if Ein was alright, you needed to know if Spike and Faye and Jet missed them, if they missed them at all. You needed –

* * *

You hit the ground, and everything was very brutally snapped into focus.  Spike was beneath you, in a haphazard attempt to break your fall.  His hands were warm on your skin.  You did not know where Heimlen was, but judging by the fact that Spike didn’t seem in any hurry to move, he had been taken care of.  At least for the moment.  

Spike was worried.  His face gradually came into focus above yours, his hair falling in front of his eyes, his expression wild, hands shaking as they lifted you up, settled you in his arms.  Ah.  He was very, very warm.

You frowned.  The pain was still there.  Hadn’t you hallucinated it?  You ghosted a hand over your stomach, and you felt something sticky and warm come away on your hand.  You looked, and the blurry red against your fingers swam in front of your eyes.

“Ah . . .,” you breathed, and the rest of the pain in your body slowly started to filter through, your ribs, your head, your arms, your legs, your stomach, your stomach your _stomach –_   “Looks like I really fucked up this time.  What good am I, huh?”  Blood was trickling out of the corners of your mouth.  You didn’t think it was Heimlen’s anymore.

“You idiot,” he said, so softly that you almost couldn’t hear.  His voice was shaking, his hands were shaking.  All of him was shaking.  “You _idiot._ ”

You smiled.  “When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.  Sam told me that . . . once.”

“That’s even more idiotic than the elitist crap I used to spout about life being a dream,” Spike spat, grip tightening around you, and you realized very suddenly that he was practically curled around you, cradling you in his arms, your head nestled against his chest.  It was almost like you were dying.

Were you?

“It’s okay,” you whispered, for lack of anything else.  You lifted your hand, and placed it against his cheek, tracing the dip in his cheekbone with your fingertips.  “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” he mumbled, leaning into your touch.  “It’s not . . . you’re –”

“Hey,” you whispered.  It was getting harder to talk, now.  You wondered why.  The pain was getting worse, and worse, and _worse._ “Can you . . .” You drew in a deep breath, and the action elicited a racking, heaving cough out of you.  You turned your head to the side, but did not miss the droplets of blood that spattered along the floor.  You drew in another breath, and this time it rattled.  “Can you . . . hold me?”  Your hand was tighter on his cheek now, sliding down to sweep your thumb across his lips.  His eyes darted around your face, from your eyes to your nose to your lips, flicking over your hair and the faint scars on your neck.  It was almost like he was trying to memorize you.  That was silly.  You weren’t going anywhere.  Were you?  You licked your lips.  Your mouth was awfully dry.  “Until . . .”  Another deep breath, a sharp stab of pain, a breathy cry escaping you.  You felt the blood bubble out of you, dripping onto the floor.  “Until the pain goes away?”  

“Okay,” he whispered, taking one of his hands from your body and laying it over the one you had rested against his face.  “Okay.”  He grasped your fingers, and squeezed.  You brushed the hair out of his eyes.  Everything except for his face was starting to grow . . . dim.

“Hey . . .,” you said, trying to pick your octave up, trying to manage a smile, and you did not want to know how pathetic the attempt looked.  “Live through this . . . and you won’t look back.  Okay?”  He opened his mouth, but you shushed him with a look.  “Live . . . through this . . . and you won’t . . . look back.”  Your eyelids fluttered.

Spike’s hand was immediately at your face, shaking you.  “Hey, hey, stop it, you can’t – you can’t . . . .”  He inhaled sharply, and it was your turn to lay your hand over his, brushing your thumb over his knuckles.  “Stop it,” he whispered, eyes searching your face, dipping down to your abdomen and squeezing shut.  “ _Stop it.”_

“Hey . . .,” you whispered, and watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.  You looked back into his eyes.  They were shining, wet, almost.  Was that normal?  “There’s . . . a few things . . . I want to say.  Okay?”  He nodded, hair bouncing.  “I’m not sorry . . . that I met you.  You . . . _you . . ._ were what I wanted.”  You gripped his hand against your face harder, staring resolutely into his brown, brown _brown_ eyes.  They were so brown, and you wanted to drown in them.  “And I . . . I . . .” The pain was starting to fade, now, and so was your vision.  You looked up, past him, to the windows installed high above the room, letting in small rectangular windows of light.  You looked back to Spike, and smiled.  “I love you.  You know that, right?  I love you . . . I love you I love you I love you.”

Something wet dripped down onto your nose, and you wrinkled it up in confusion.  Was it raining?  You did not remember being outside.  

“I love you, too,” Spike whispered, and the way your name fell from his lips felt like heaven, felt like a song, felt like a cool rush of air over your face, and you smiled.  You smiled so wide you felt the dried blood at the corners of your mouth crack and flake off.  “I love you, too.”  Your vision was slipping again, sliding past him up to the windows above.  The pain was finally, finally beginning to go away.  Blackness started encroaching on the edges of your eyesight, and you focused on the patch of light filtering in through the window up above.

Spike’s hands were warm, too warm, against you.  You were cold.  You were very, very cold.  You were tired, too.  So tired.  But you didn’t want to close your eyes.  

As if it was from far away, you felt your hand slipping from Spike’s.  You felt it hit the stone floor.  You felt your head loll against his chest.  You felt his voice rumbling.  You felt his heartbeat, thudding frantically against your cheek.

Your eyes were still focused on the window.  Up, up, up, high up above.  The first glimpse of the outside world you had had in days.

You were tired.  You were so, so tired.  What was the harm in a little nap?  A quick twenty minutes or so.  You had been through so much, after all.

But you still did not want to close your eyes.  Spike was partially blocking the window now, hair frantically bobbing as he bent closer to you.  He was saying something.  You couldn’t hear him.

What you did hear was a voice, soft and familiar, smelling of green tea and stale blood and green-tinted kitchen light.  Fingers wrapped tightly around a mug, lips wrapped tightly around a small smile.  You had asked her what to do, when a patient dies on you.  When someone _important_ dies on you.  She had laughed, softly, fingers tightening.  Green tea was heavy on your tongue.

* * *

_You’re gonna carry that weight._

* * *

The sky was so very, very blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more to go
> 
> and then we end this
> 
> once and for all


	11. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the final one
> 
> hope you guys enjoy

It was raining in Elsin.

Water pooled in murky puddles around his feet as he trudged onwards, head bowed low against the sky.  The hands stuffed deep in his pockets were cold.  He wiggled his fingers, scrunched them up and dug his nails into his palms, but it was no use.  Water had soaked too far into his jacket, too far down his sleeves.  Drops of water clung to the curve of his wrists, sliding down his palms and fingers to pool in the bottoms of his pockets.  

This town had a lot of land, and not a lot of houses.  The newly-soaked earth stretched out before him on all sides, broken up only by the occasional crater or rusty old satellite stuck deep in the dirt, receiver long gone silent.  He could see houses, in the distance, but could not tell if people lived there.

The artificial weather patterns of this artificial atmosphere were really starting to bug him.  He didn’t remember her mentioning it.

The houses were growing closer now.  He saw pale yellow light, filtering out, away.  The toe of his nearly-soaked-through shoe hit concrete, and he stumbled, blinked.

It was not as she had described.

The roads were paved, now.  Paved awfully, unprofessionally, with zigzagging paint smears  that were somewhat trying to be lane markers and stop lines, but paved.  Streetlights lined the avenues, vintage, rusty things, with large halogen bulbs housed in murky glass casings, but the light was bright, and spread a yellow haze over the surrounding houses and businesses.  Oh, those, too.  She hadn’t mentioned those.  They had  _ neon,  _ of all things, spelling out names, designs, there was a bar with an acrid yellow flagon of beer, a pharmacy with a chartreuse plus sign, a restaurant with a dull red fork and spoon hovering crookedly over a pale blue plate.  They were all lined up in neat rows along the roadside, whereas the houses were scattered randomly, built wherever the original owner had pleased, wherever had the least rocks and craters and was marginally flat.  Some jutted up awkwardly against the businesses, sharing a side or a corner, or in other cases being completely askew, diagonal and out-of-place with everything around it.

He walked up to the diner, shoes squelching, and shouldered open the dirty glass door.  The cashier looked up, and squinted at him.  Judging by the dirty rag and cup in her hands, and the smeared apron tied around her waist, she was the cook, as well.  Maybe even the owner, too, now that he thought about it.

“Haven’t seen you before,” she remarked, and her queer accent startled him.  He hadn’t realized people had been here long enough to acquire a whole new accent.  “You just move here or somethin’?”

“No,” he said, softly, vocal cords cracking with disuse.  “Visiting.”

“We don’t get many visitors,” she remarked, eyeing him up and down, and he knew she took careful notice of the hands stuffed in his pockets.  He drew them out, reluctantly, and let them hang by his sides.  He wiggled his fingers.  They were still cold.

“I’m looking for someone.  Someones.  I don’t know.  Their name’s – uh –”  He wracked his brains for a second, then finally remembered, and when it passed through his lips the cashier/cook/owner/whoever gave him the strangest look, and then shook her head.

“Haven’t heard that name in a while.”  She went back to polishing, chewing on the inside of her cheek.  She set the cup down, and moved on to a fork spotted with age.  He waited.  Finally, she sighed, and jabbed the fork off to the left of the diner.  “If they live anywhere, they live out that way.  Half a mile or so from town.  That’s where all the old residents live.  Or, at least, they did.  No one in the new part of town hears from the oldies much.”

He thanks her, and has to bite back the name  _ Annie  _ from the edge of his teeth.  Regardless, it sends a stab through his chest.  One of many people he hadn’t been able to save.

“You be careful out there,” the woman calls out just as he’s about to leave.  “Weather hasn’t been too nice lately.”

“Yeah.  It got a little chilly today.  It’s those cold winds, you know?”  He left without another word, his throat burning.

He returned to the freezing rain, which had slowed slightly, from a freezing downpour to a freezing drizzle.  He started off in the direction the woman had pointed, a section of town comprised completely of randomly placed, ramshackle houses, with rusted tin roofs and windows that looked like they had been carved out by a butcher’s knife.  The concrete roads degraded in quality from bad to worse, eventually becoming no more than chunks of rubble dug into the dirt.  He hopped as best he could from one piece of concrete to the next, trying his best to keep his shoes out of the deepening mud puddles, but before long the concrete faded out completely, leaving only a worn dirt track for him to tread on.  As he approached the old district, the lights of only three or four houses greeted him, and he warily eyed the empty yawning doorways of the houses he passed.  The paranoia of nearly a decade of bounty hunting was finally starting to get to him.

He headed toward the closest house, a small thing with a rusty tin roof and an attempt at a flower garden and front walkway stretching out in front of it.  A few daffodils were still poking up out of the largely dry and uninhabitable Mars soil, their yellow heads drooped and swaying against the rain.  He knocked on the wooden door, knuckles grating against the unsanded wood, and waited.

A woman opened, and he didn’t even have to ask, because he knew, he  _ knew,  _ deep down, but he did anyways, “Are you –”  Her name burned in his throat like whiskey, and he nearly coughed as he said it with how much it hurt.  

The woman blinked.  Blinked again.  “ . . . Yes,” she breathed, voice sounding as if it were a thousand miles away.  “Yes, I’m her mother.”

He could have passed out right then and there.  Now that she had said it, now that he knew, for sure, he saw her in every aspect of her mother’s face.  The tilt of the eyes, the quirk of the mouth, the way her feet were planted in the dirt, the wariness of how high her shoulders were raised.  

“She –,” he stopped, voice cracking, licked his lips, tried again.  “She wanted me to tell you . . . that she missed you.  All those years she was away.  She hoped . . . she hoped you had never forgotten about her.”

“How could I?” her mother breathed, fingers gripping the edge of the door so tightly that the tips turned white.  “The day they took her . . . I didn’t . . . I didn’t even . . . .”  She stopped, gnawing on her bottom lip, and even that was so much like  _ her  _ that he wanted to look away.  “You should come in.  I . . . I want to know.”

He nodded, and followed her inside.  It was just as she had described.  One long room, separated by a curtain.  Kitchen on one side, rustic iron stove, carved out window above the rusty steel sink, crates placed on their ends with cloths nailed to them to act as somewhat functional cupboards.  But where her toys and childrens’ games had been, in her memory, there was now an old couch that looked as if it had been in a war, a slab of wood held up by slabs of slate at each of its four corners to serve as a coffee table.  

“I-It’s not much,” her mother stammered, pattering over to the sink and fishing a cracked mug out of it.  “But it’s . . . home, I suppose.”  She turned the mug around in her fingers, made a dissatisfied face, and put it back.  “I-I’m sorry, I don’t really have guests all that often, I –”

“It’s alright,” he said, gingerly taking a seat on the couch.  Unsure of what to do with his hands, he just laid them pathetically in his lap, one over the other, running his thumb absentmindedly over the back of his hand.  Like she used to do.  

“It’s just, I –” Her mother paused, placed a hand over her face, dragged it down to rest against her cheek.  “She just – always believed someone would save her, you know?  That someone would – would swoop in, save the day, just like in comic books.  But that . . . that didn’t happen, did it?  In the end?”

_ As good as.   _ The words burned in his chest, and he tried to swallow past the lump in his throat.

“She saved herself,” he said, for lack of the answer she wanted.  “From the people that took her from you.  She . . . became her own hero.  She met this girl, became a doctor, she . . .”  He was staring at the ground, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.  “She saved my life.”  Soft sobs started to sound from the other end of the couch, but he didn’t look up.  “She was kind, she was brave, she was . . . she was  _ ferocious,  _ she was funny and witty and smart and . . . she was beautiful.  She looks like you.”

“You love her.”  Her mother was staring at him, a look of understanding crossing her face.  He laughed, softly, hanging his head to hide his face.

“. . . Yeah.  Yeah, I do.”

* * *

He caught a ride to Earth on a commuter ship, amidst tired businessmen and women who looked as if they were questioning how exactly they had managed to end up on a planet as desolate and empty as  _ Earth.   _ He landed with not a very clear idea of where he was, but luckily Earth wasn’t a very heavily populated place anymore, and Siniz had made a name for himself in the years he had spent mapping its ever-changing dips and craters.

He caught another ride to Siniz’s hut in the back of a rickety pick-up truck, a vehicle at least 30 years old judging by all the rattling and creaking and flakes of rust flying up into his face as it sped across the wide, desert-like plains.  Protrusions from the ground arose here and there, and he caught glimpses of doors and thickly-paned glass windows, occasionally a few grubby children playing in the dirt outside, kicking a rock or a half-deflated ball against the wall of their hut or to each other.  They watched the pick-up truck rattle by, but returned to their activities upon realizing it was only passing through.  

He watched the remnants of decidedly not-meteor-proof houses and buildings roll by, steel beams poking up out of the ruins of skyscrapers, a precarious pile of bricks that may have once been the chimney of a house, a twisted-up pile of dented bicycles, huge slabs of concrete just lying there, as if they had been casually dropped by a passing giant.  

The pick-up truck sped on, out of what had once been a city, out to where Siniz lived.  The climate became hotter, the landscape flatter, the ruins fewer and farther between.  The vehicle finally rolled to a stop at the edge of a large crater, by the rough edges and the smell of overturned dirt, newly formed, and the driver hollered at him that Siniz was somewhere in there before speeding off, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake.

Spike sighed, but before he could walk two feet, a small pair of arms was wrapped around his waist, a small red head was buried against his abdomen, a small dog was yipping and barking at his feet.

“ _ Spiiiiiiiiike!!!” _ Ed cried, hugging him tighter, and he grunted uncomfortably.  “You’re back, you’re back, you’re back!  She promised, she did, the doctor, Ed  _ remembers  _ –”

“François, what’s all the ruckus –,” a voice called from the crater, and a very tall, very square man came into view, shirt sleeves rolled to above his elbows, dabbing a towel over his sweaty forehead.  He locked eyes with Spike, and his laugh rang for what seemed like miles.  “Spike Spiegel!  Why, I’ll be damned!  First one Bebop resident, then another, what are the odds.”

“Yeah, yeah!” Ed fervently agreed, nodding so vigorously that her chin jabbed repeatedly into his large intestine, and he had the distinct impression that he was starting to bruise.  “Where is she?  What happened to her?  Ed misses her!  She was so nice!”

Spike felt his entire body freeze.  Siniz, noticing the change, hurriedly tugged Ed away, scolding, “Really, François, give the man some room.  He’s traveled a long way.”  Ed groaned, going limp against her father’s hold at the back of her shirt, and allowed herself to be hauled away.  Spike slowly followed, hands stuffed deep in his pockets.

“So . . . what brings you all the way out here again?” Siniz asked as he plopped Ed down at the base of the crater, and she proceeded to cartwheel away onto a crate, perching on top of it like a cat.  “Seems like quite a long ways to go for just a chat.”

“She, uh . . . wanted to make sure you two were all right.  After . . . what happened.” 

Siniz grunted in understanding, plopping down on a box of potatoes and crossing his arms.  Even sitting, his head still came up nearly to Spike’s collarbone.  “We made out alright.  The soldiers didn’t particularly want us for anything, they just dragged us from the house and threw us far enough away that we wouldn’t be a bother.  Roughed me up a bit, but they didn’t hurt her too bad.”

“Good,” Spike sighed, shoulders relaxing, a hand reaching up to rub at the back of his neck.  “Good.”

“You alright there, Spike?” Siniz asked, but Spike had the distinct impression he already knew the answer.

“More or less.”

_ As good as. _

* * *

Mars, again.  An unmarked grave in a back-alley graveyard tucked behind an abandoned church.  The windows were riddled with bullet holes, the cross at the top knocked askew, where there had once been a two-inch thick solid oak door was now a yawning black cavern into a damp, dark space.  He shimmied around the building, hopping a rusty black fence and nearly twisting his ankle when he landed on a loose cobblestone.

It had taken some digging to find this place.  A few bribes for city officials, endless poking around in the slums, old contacts that thought he had been dead for nearly a decade.  The records of the fire had been carefully stashed away, nearly impossible to be unearthed under all the bureaucracy and shady dealing that went into concealing them, but Spike’s specialty was in nearly impossible things.  The records of where she had been buried had been even harder to find, with those files actually having been disposed of somewhere along the line.  A missing body in a city of nearly 10 million, no one was any the wiser.  

The day was hot, with smoke billowing over the graveyard from an adjacent building, and he thought it was unbearably ironic.  

“Sorry,” he said, as he crouched down and laid a small bundle of flowers against the headstone.  More a rock stuck a few inches in the ground, if he was being honest, but still.  “She wanted to make sure you were doing alright.  That no one had graverobbed you, or anything.  I asked her who would want to graverob a doctor and she laughed.”  He snorted to himself.  The fact that he was talking to a rock registered, somewhere deep down, but he ignored it.  “She said plenty of people would want to graverob her.  She did do it, you know . . . she became a doctor.  She saved me, for one.”  He ran a hand through his hair, sighing.  “I know you and I never met, and you’re probably wondering what some scruffy-haired asshole is doing at your grave, but . . . she couldn’t be here.  So I came instead.  I know it’s not . . . the same, but . . .”  He shrugged.  “It’s the best I could do under the current circumstances.”  

He slowly rose to his feet, eyes sweeping over the similarly dilapidated graves surrounding hers, some marked with actual words, others with symbols or knife-carved grooves, a bottle sunk into the soil, a pair of shoes with the laces tied around the headstone.  Hers was the only one with no defining mark, the soil untouched, the headstone relatively clean.  He sighed, and closed his eyes, breathing in the acrid scent of the smoke filtering down from above.  He realized that it was probably the last thing she had ever smelled, the last thing she ever knew.

“Goodbye, Sam.  I’m . . . sorry I couldn’t take care of her.  I’m sorry.”

* * *

The Bebop was not quiet when he walked back onto it, and he desperately wanted it to be.  He resisted the urge to snarl and hurl something against a wall, and instead just decided to go deal with whoever was making unnecessary amounts of noise.  Probably Faye.  Most definitely Faye.

“Well, you see, I told him that you were ‘as good as’ and, well, that didn’t go over too well –,” Faye was saying as he neared the end of the hallway, and he didn’t even have the energy to properly decipher what she was saying.

A disgruntled grumble, from Jet.  “He’s been gone for the past week and a half, jetting off god-knows-where.  You need to talk some sense into him.”

“Yeah!  He’s been a real goddamn wreck, I’ll tell you what –”

_ Wait, who are they talking to – _

An irritated sigh, the sound of fabric rustling.  “Jesus, why’d you have to tell him, ‘as good as,’ huh?  You know how he is, and now you can tell him that I’m definitely, 100%,  _ not –” _

He stopped dead in his tracks in the doorway.  

“– dead.”

You said his name, and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.

* * *

Granted, being on the brink of death for nearly a month, slipping in and out of consciousness and in and out of hospitals wasn’t exactly pleasant, but Spike Spiegel nearly tackling you and burying his head in the crook of your neck was sort of making up for it.  

He wrapped his arms tightly around your waist and you felt him exhale shakily against your neck, and you smiled.

“Hey,” you breathed, running a hand through his hair.  “I’m alive.”

“I hate you,” he whispered, and you kissed the top of his head.  “I’ve been running around giving people your dying messages and you have the audacity to be  _ alive,  _ of all things.”

“Rude,” you sniffed, but your chest swelled and tightened to the point of bursting, and you didn’t know if you even had the capacity to feel as much love for him as you did.  “I missed you, too.”

“I didn’t miss you at all,” he grumbled, but the desperate kiss he pressed to your lips a second later made his previous statement highly questionable, to say the least.

“Well, after all the people I have to go visit and tell that I’m not dead, I’m inclined to think so.”

* * *

You did not remember Elsin being so . . .  _ developed.   _ Spike had described the diner, the woman inside, the Old Residents District, but it still wasn’t enough to prepare you for how  _ different  _ it was.  There were people, actual living, breathing, not-on-the-brink of death people, milling around, going about their day, tending shops and businesses and leading children around by the hand.   _ Children.   _ Children without blood-stained handkerchiefs stuffed in their pockets, children who knew rain and thunderstorms and the sound of water against a tin roof.  Some of the roofs weren’t even tin, now, they were actual honest to god roofing material, and it boggled your mind.

The sun was out, the sky a vibrant blue, but you could smell fresh rain in the damp earth, see the remnants of it clinging to eaves, condensing at the bottom of window panes.  So unlike the unlivable scorching heat of when you were a child, with the dry, cracked earth, the mismatched houses, randomly placed over a wide section of relatively flat dirt, the desperate attempts to keep cool through gratuitous use of shade and questionable chilled beverages.

There was none of that now.

You wandered through town as if you were in a dream, stepping absentmindedly from one building to another, staring at the people around you as if trying to decide whether they were a hallucination or not.  

“Stop wandering, you look crazy,” Spike griped, grabbing your hand and dragging you away from the center of town, towards the Old Residents District, towards –

“I  _ am  _ crazy, you idiot,” you snorted, but his hand was warm in yours and you let him tug you forward, stomach twinging a little with the sudden movement but you had gotten used to it by now.  Faye had removed the bullet in its entirety, and you had spent the few minutes before Spike walked in the door complimenting her on managing it, secretly thanking whatever higher power that was that she hadn’t managed to kill you in the process.  

You loved Faye, you did, but she was not the most . . . delicate of people.

As Spike led you deeper into the Old Residents District, the buildings grew smaller, the houses more familiar, and simultaneously, emptier.  Fewer people milled about on this side of town, and in fact, few of the houses around you seemed to be inhabited at all, but the familiarity of some of them struck you in the gut like a sucker punch.

There was Richy Goldberg’s house, who had passed away of the virus a month or so after it had been discovered.  His parents had moved back to the city.  

And there, just over the hill, Tensa Murren’s house, an old woman who used to sell lemonade before becoming so ill that she couldn’t leave her bedside.

And  _ there,  _ there was your old friend’s house, the girl with the dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, and pink blood-stained dress, with the dollhouse and makeshift dolls and parents that looked out at the two of you with sad hopeful stares.

And there –

Your mother looked up from where she was kneeling in the garden, planting flowers, and you burst into tears.  

The two of you ran into each other’s arms, crying, sobbing, grasping at each other and tugging at each other’s clothing, to ascertain, to make  _ sure,  _ that this was really happening, this was really really  _ real,  _ you were alive and well and so was she, she had  _ survived,  _ you had  _ saved  _ her, you had  _ saved  _ her with the vaccine you had paid such a price for –

She pulled away from you, wiping the snot and tears from her face with the back of her hand, and smiled so widely you thought her cheeks would give out.

You had a lot of catching up to do.

* * *

Ed leaped into your arms before you could even see her, and she wasn’t crying, but you sure were.  You knelt down and wrapped her up in your arms, gangly limbs all clacking together like dry sticks but you didn’t care, she didn’t care, she was happy to see you and you were happy she was even alive.  

“I should have Ein bite you for scaring Ed so much!” she threatened from her position of all four limbs wrapped resolutely around your waist.  “Ed was so worried!  For so long!  You’re so  _ mean,  _ Spike!”

“Intimidating, kid,” Spike snorted, and Ed and Ein growled at the same time.  You hugged her even tighter.

“Spiegel, I swear, I should kill you for making my daughter so sad,” Siniz threatened, drawing up to his full height and crossing his arms, but you only laughed and flashed him a blinding smile.

“C’mon, Siniz, to be fair I  _ was  _ shot pretty seriously.  I even gave a touching little death speech.  It was heartbreaking.  You should’ve been there.”

“Don’t,” Spike sighed, placing a heavy hand on top of your head and scrunching up your hair, but instead of retorting you took his hand and kissed the palm of it, shooting him an apologetic smile.

“Sorry, Spiegel.  Defense mechanism, you know?  I cope with a serious situation by telling very poorly-timed jokes.”

“You two are the most cliché couple I’ve ever seen and honestly it’s a little disgusting,” Siniz groaned, and you guffawed, stomach spasming against Ed’s iron grip, and at your laugh she started laughing too, swinging her body so the both of you were teetering around the bottom of the crater you had found her and her father in.  

“I know!  Isn’t it great?  Nothing like a near-death experience to bring people closer together, right?”

“ _ Doc –” _

“Haha . . . sorry.”

* * *

The last stop was the most melancholy, and you were a little bitter about Spike beating you to the punch.

“This is supposed to be  _ symbolic,  _ Spiegel, two old companions finally meeting after all these years, the grizzled survivor speaking stoically to the headstone and breaking down in tears at the last moment – and you ruined it!  I honestly don’t know why I keep you around.   _ I’m  _ supposed to bring the flowers and lay them carefully on the grave, brush a few specks of dirt off the headstone and stroke it like a lost lover’s cheek –”

“Can you shut it, we’re here.”

You clammed up as Spiegel helped you hop the fence, landing lightly with his hands steady around your waist, staring into the place where one of the most important people in your life had been hauled and buried without even a name on the headstone.

“Oh,” you sighed, taking a few tentative steps forward and surveying the abandoned graveyard.  “I mean, it’s better than I was expecting, you know?  I kinda thought they would just throw her in a dumpster somewhere and leave her to rot, but . . . this isn’t half bad, you know?  It’s even behind a church.  I don’t know if she was religious, but the thought still counts.”

Spike didn’t say a word, and you approached the grave he pointed to in silence.  You crouched down in front of it, fingers brushing the headstone, trailing down to trace the petals of the flowers Spike had placed days ago.  You felt something well up in your chest and stick in your throat, and you swallowed in an attempt to force it back down.

“Hey, Sam,” you said softly, tracing the dirt at the base of the headstone.  She was down there, somewhere.  “I don’t know what this idiot’s told you, but I’m doing alright.  Finally became a doctor, had a practice in the slums for a bit until this asshole came and ruined everything.  And then, you know, he had the gall to make me fall in love with his stupid face.  Isn’t that the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard?  He’s a real idiot, but . . . he visited you, at least.  Even brought you flowers, and I don’t think you would have hated them too much.  I . . .”  You stopped, throat tightening, and you bowed your head.  “I miss you.  I miss your kitchen.  I miss that stupid green-tinted window.  I miss the nights when I would wake up from a nightmare and you would make me a cup of green tea and sit with me until I stopped shaking and –”  You drew in a shaky breath, gnawing on your bottom lip, and you felt Spike crouch next to you, hand coming up to rub lightly at your back.  “Thank you, Sam.”  You pressed a kiss to your fingertips and pressed them into the soil, and refused to think about how it had ended, how it had all began.  “ _ Thank you.” _

* * *

You lay in Spike’s room on the Bebop, all tangled up in his arms, head pressed against his chest.  His arms were like iron around you, gripping the back of your shirt, and he kept pressing spontaneous kisses to the top of your head.  

“Quite touchy, aren’t we?” you teased, sneaking a glance up at him.  

“Shut up.”

You laughed, and nestled farther into him.  A few moments of silence, the only sound his heavy breathing, your light inhales and exhales, and the thumping of his heart against your cheek.

“Spike.”

“Yeah?”

“I . . . I’m glad I didn’t die.”

“Well, shit, me too, or were you having trouble establishing that?”

“No, you idiot, I . . . I just . . . wanted to be not-alive for such a long time.  And people like you and Sam, you . . . gave me a reason to keep going, I guess.  So . . . thank you.”

“You’re terrible with words,” he quipped, and you resisted the urge to hit him.  “That’s all frilly bullshit for ‘I love you, you big idiot, thanks for saving my ass,’ and it should please you to know that I feel the same.  So that’s that.  Now shut up and sleep, invalid.”

You chuckled, and wrapped your arms around his waist.

“Whatever you say, invalid.”

* * *

“ _ Thank you,” _ you whispered, hours later, when his breathing had slowed and the ship had finally gone quiet.  

The stars reeled by overhead, the planets rotated in their fixed positions.  

Your mother slept well, in the house you had promised that you would fix up for her, knowing that, even after your father’s death, she wasn’t alone.  Not anymore. 

Ed slept in a sprawled-out heap on the floor of the cleaned-up hut, Siniz nodding off in a chair beside her, maps spread out in front of him, cartographer tools laying idly by as his head drooped further and further forward.

Sam slept, somewhere far away, somewhere far below, somewhere far above.  The flowers Spike had left for her had been her favorite, but she had never gotten around to telling you that.

_ “Thank you.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i seriously cannot thank you all enough for the support you've given over the year and nine months i've been churning out this thing. this started as purely a thirst-quenching device, i had just finished cowboy bebop and was wholly dissatisfied with the end, but i also loved spike spiegel with all of my heart and soul. it wasn't originally intended to have a plot, things just kind of . . . fell into place somewhere along the way.
> 
> i don't really know what to say, i've never actually completed a fic before, but just . . . thank you all so so so so SO much, all of your comments really kept me going, and i honestly never believed a story like this could ever get the attention it did.
> 
> so thank you. i love you all so much, you really made writing this thing fun. 
> 
> thank you all so much.


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